298 . WHALES AND DOLPHINS 



which may be taken as typical of the rest, the animals had 

 grounded on the outer edge of the sand flat just on neap tide 

 high-water mark. In ' The Scottish Naturalist ' article 

 already referred to, it is stated : " They (the False Killers) had 

 struggled vigorously and some were still alive more than 

 twenty-four hours after stranding. By their exertions they 

 only succeeded in embedding themselves more firmly in the 

 sand, so that when examination was made some were half 

 buried in silted sand and others were lying partly immersed 

 in troughs they themselves had made. . . . It is easy to 

 imagine that, when the animals do get away from their normal 

 environment, the form of coast on which they have habitually 

 been found would be precisely the one to present the greatest 

 degree of embarrassment to animals accustomed to deep 

 water." 



The False Killer is gregarious, and judging from the numbers 

 stranded in the same place at one time it must move about in 

 schools composed of hundreds of individuals of both sexes and 

 all stages of maturity. 



Cuttlefishes are the chief source of food, but remains of 

 fishes such as the ordinary cod have occasionally been found 

 in their stomachs along with the horny beaks of the cuttle- 

 fishes. 



Males and females appear to be represented in the schools in 

 approximately equal numbers, and in both sexes maturity is 

 attained when the animals are from 12 to 14 feet in length. 



The considerable range in size of the fcetuses found at 

 approximately the same time indicates that the breeding 

 season in this species must be spread over a fairly extensive 

 part of the year. In the strandings of November-December, 

 1935, the smallest foetus was 2 feet i| inches and the largest 

 3 feet 10 inches. The largest in the Dornoch stranding of 

 October, 1927, was over 6 feet long. 



The False Killer is not less adequately supplied with blubber 

 from which oil could be obtained than are other species which 

 are hunted for this purpose, but it is so irregular in its appear- 

 ances and so little is known about it except what has been 

 gained by its occasional visits to coastal waters that it has 

 not up to the present been made the object of commercial 

 exploitation. 



