50 FURTHER NOl'ES ON THE IJURNHAM RORQUAI,. 



examples, and there are certain others that may be found in bloom throughout 

 the year. With some I have thought it to be due to the influence of the soil, for 

 the following reason. At certain spots, in almost any year, plants may be found 

 much in advance of their fellows as regards vegetation. The theory of country 

 folk is that it is the effect of a 'warm corner.' That theory is not always applic- 

 able, for all warm corners do not show similar results. Near Willows Green, 

 Felstead, on the first of this month (February), I observed the catkins of the 

 Hazel on several plants fully developed and shedding pollen. Adjoining these 

 were some fully developed catkins of the Sallow, but not as yet shedding pollen. 

 At the same place, in a previous year, I picked a spray of Hawthorn fully one month 

 in advance of its time, and similar phenomena have been noticed there by other 

 folks. This place is high and bleak ; and it seems, theref re, impossible to come 

 to an}- other conclusion than thit the soil, in some manner, has a stimulating 

 influence. 1 believe man}' other places give like results, could they be put upon 

 record. It is generally, however, difficult to say positively whether they are not 

 in some manner sheltered. 



" If we are, then, justified in saying that plants have an inherent principle of 

 variation in their periods of rest, and this principle of variation, although gener- 

 ally controlled by meteorological agencies, is sometimes affected by causes of 

 which we are in ignorance, then the transition to any abnormal case does not 

 appear to be very great. In that of the 'Holy Thorn' the variation seems to 

 have been so pronounced as to have become to a certain degree hereditary. It is 

 even po sible, when we consider what has been done with culinary plants in 

 obtaining early varieties that the Glastonbury Thorn might, by a process of 

 artificial selection, be obtained from the ordinary Hawthorn." 



FURTHER NOTES ON THE BURNHAM 

 RORQUAL 



iBAL^NOPTERA MUSCULUS-). 



(Vide The Essex Naturalist, \o\. v., pp. 124-8, and vol. vi., p. 115.) 



Hy WALTER CROUCH, F.Z.S. 



A S related by our Editor in a note quoted in the second reference 

 "^^*- above, the skeleton of the Finner Whale figured by me in 

 The Essex Naturalist (vol. v. Plate v.), was exhibited last 

 autumn at Burnham and Southend. It did not, however, find much 

 favour as a " show " at the latter place, and was removed before I 

 had an opportunity of seeing it. Since then, when visiting Burnham, 

 I made enquiry, and found it lying in a loft at the Temperance 

 Hotel. 



The bones were carefully cleaned and articulated by Mr. E. 

 Gerrard, but are now only partly mounted, the pieces of ba/een, and 

 some of the smaller bones, such as those of the manus, etc., bein<^ 

 packed up in boxes. 



