WHALES AND PORPOISES 31 



patchings. The back, the back fin, and the tail are blackish, 



almost purple in parts ; so also are the flippers. The under 



parts are grayish-white ; the sides are grey, sometimes tinged 



with yellow ; and the flippers and much of the body are strangely 



marked with whitish spots, streaks, 



and scratches, giving the creature 



the appearance of its glossy hide 



having been scored by the body 



being dragged over pebbles. The 



food of this grampus is mainly 



cuttlefish. Its distribution is 



pretty general, though it seems 



to avoid the Arctic regions. As 



regards its freq uentation of British head and flipper of risso's 



^ . ^ Grampus [Grampus gnseus). 



waters, it has been most commonly 



met with in the British Channel, between Devonshire and Kent, 

 though it has also been recorded in the Solway Firth and off the 

 Shetland Islands. A specimen caught near Chichester in 1875 

 was exhibited for a day or two at the Brighton Aquarium. 



Lagenorhynchus albirostris. The White-beaked Dolphin 



The genus Lagenorhynchus — " short-beaked " dolphins — in- 

 cludes a group of several small cetaceans which are thought to 

 connect the beakless forms previously described, in which the 

 muzzle is very short, with the long-snouted true dolphins, 

 where the muzzle is often prolonged into a form like the beak 

 of a bird in outline. In the short-beaked dolphins there is very 

 little break in outline between the forehead and the muzzle. In 

 the White-beaked Dolphin the upper jaw is rather shorter than 

 the lower. The teeth are small, and may be as many as twenty- 

 six in number on each side of both jaws. The adult white- 

 beaked dolphin is from 8 ft. to 9 ft. long. One specimen captured 

 on the coast of Norfolk measured 8 ft. 2 in. This dolphin is 

 very handsomely coloured, the upper part, including the flippers 

 and the tail, being deep purple-black. The sides are grayish, 

 and the belly, throat, under jaw, and the greater part of the 



