222 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



stranded at Limekilns in the Firth of Forth in 1689; another at 

 Cramond in 1701 ; and one more at the same place in 1769. 1 

 Occasionally they have come ashore in "schools." Thus 

 seventeen individuals are said to have been got near 

 the mouth of the Elbe in 1723, and Lacepede describes 

 a shoal of thirty-two, stranded at Audierne on the west 

 coast of France on 14th March 1789. These last are 

 said to have been mostly females, a very remarkable fact, 

 as we shall presently see. These seem to have been part of 

 a more general migration ; for in the year immediately 

 preceding, six were found dead on the Kentish coast, one 

 ran ashore in the Thames, and others were stranded on the 

 coasts of Holland. Yet another instance of a European 

 school of Cachalots occurred in the Adriatic, at Citta Nuova, 

 in 1853. 2 



Between 190S and 1914, forty-two Sperm whales were 

 landed by the Scottish whaling-stations, mostly by that at 

 Buneaveneader, in the following years and months : 



Thus 57 per cent, of the whole catch (twenty-four out 

 of forty -two) was got in August, and about 78 per cent, of 

 the whole in the months of July and August together. 

 The season is about two months later than that of the 

 Nordcaper. 



We may illustrate this seasonal difference by the 

 following simple diagram (Fig. 2), in which (going in 

 advance of our immediate subject) I have included the Sei- 

 whale and the Bottlenose in addition to the Nordcaper and 



1 On these and other early Scottish records, see Turner, Proc. Roy. 

 Soc. Ed., vii., pp. 365-370, 1871. 



i Heckel, Sitzungsber. Wiss. Akad. Wien, Math.-naturwiss. CL, 1853, 

 ii., p. 765. 



