296 The Field Naturalist's Quarterly November 



1835, washed up in the Humber estuary. It is larger than 

 the whale in the bottle ; in fact, it measures (in the skeleton) 

 only 30 inches short of 50 feet, while its upper jaws display 

 no fewer than five hundred and eighty plates of short, 

 black whalebone. This is an example of that largest 

 mammal known to science, Sibbald's Rorqual. Far larger 

 examples have been stranded on our shores, but the Hull 

 specimen bases its prior claim on something other than 

 mere bulk. It is, in fact, a type whale, the example from 

 which Gray first described the species. I do not know 

 whether the British Museum has a type whale at Cromwell 

 Road, but I am by no means sure that it has. The 

 treasures of the Hull Museum run in the direction of 

 extremes of size, for the curator also has some type 

 diatoms, appreciable only through the microscope. Possibly 

 these tiny gentry once revelled and made merry in the 

 globigerine ooze of the Humber. The famous Dobree 

 collection of Noctuae and the fossil finger-bone of a British 

 lion — that the lion, or, at anyrate, a lion-like animal, once 

 roamed in Britain's forests is well assured — are among the 

 other possessions of interest to the naturalist. 



Necessarily omitting the splendid collections of both 

 Ipswich and Norwich, I come next to the excellent 

 municipal museum at Great Yarmouth. While the most 

 lasting memory of the visitor will, perhaps, include the 

 underground dungeons, the old coaches, and the models 

 of local fishing craft of many ages, I was particularly 

 struck by the contents of two cases, of which the curator 

 has kindly sent me photographs, specially taken (like all 

 the rest) for this article, displaying local birds and fishes. 

 The first shows some typical Broadland birds, such as ruffs, 

 grebes, and spoonbills. I regret the hoopoe, but, if it had 

 to be shot — and such seems the fate of stragglers to these 

 hospitable shores — it is, at anyrate, better that it should 

 rest in a public museum rather than in the smoking-room 

 of its last enemy on earth. The fishes are also interesting, 

 if only by a singular sin of omission. Yarmouth's staple 

 fish, — its trawling glory has passed to Lowestoft, — the 

 herring, finds no place in this case ! 



( To be continued ) 



