sibbald's roequal 99 



to Dr and Mr Knox, by whom it was dissected (see 

 "Proc." Eoy. Soc. Edin., 1833, vol. i., p. 14). Another, which 

 Professor Turner has identified from the nasal bones, pre- 

 served by Dr M'Bain, was stranded on the Fife coast at 

 Aberdour in July 1858 ("Peport of British Association," 

 1871, p. 144). And lastly, there comes the famous "Long- 

 niddry Whale," which was stranded a little to the west of 

 Gosford Bay in East Lothian, on 3rd November 1869. 

 During the fortnight it lay stretched on the beach thousands 

 of people flocked to see it, and doubtless many of my 

 readers, like myself, helped to swell the crowd. The carcase 

 was purchased from the Board of Trade for £120 by an 

 oil merchant in Kirkcaldy, who had it towed across the 

 Eirth and flensed on the beach close to that town. Professor 

 Turner, who secured the skeleton for the Anatomical Museum 

 of the Edinburgh University, has given a very full descrip- 

 tion of the animal in the "Transactions" of the Poyal 

 Society of Edinburgh (xxvi., pp. 197-251). It was a female, 

 measuring 78 feet 9 inches in length, and contained a 

 male fcetus 19 feet 6 inches long. Its girth was estimated 

 at 45 feet, and its weight at 74 tons. It yielded 16 tons 

 of oil. 



COMMON EOEQUAL. 

 Bal^nopteka musculus (Z.). 



In the Common Rorqual or liazorback we have another 

 rare straggler to the district, no specimen having been 

 identified, so far as I know, since 1848.^ The earlier writers 



1 Van Beneden, in his " Histoire uaturelle des Cetaces des mers d'Europe," 

 1889, speaks of an example in the Firth of Forth in April 1880, hut the 

 statement must, I fear, he one of the many inaccuracies which that work 

 unfortunately contains, as no such occurrence is known to Sir William 

 Turner, to whom I am indebted for valuable notes on this and allied species. 



