2 68 Lloyd's natural ehstory. 



was stranded in the River Crouch, Essex, on February 12th, 

 1891. 



Habits. — There is nothing specially noteworthy in the habits 

 of this species, except that it feeds largely on fish, herrings 

 being an especially favourite food. 



in. rudolphi's rorqual, bal^enoptera borealis. 



Balcenoptera borealis. Lesson, Hist. Nat. Cetaces, p. 342 (1828); 



Flower, List Cetacea Brit. Mus. p. 6 (1885). 

 Balcenoptera laiiceps, Gray, Zool. Voy. Erebus and Terror, p. 20 



(1846); Bell, British Quadrupeds, 2nd ed. p. 407 (1874); 



Southwell, British Seals and Whales, p. 77 (1881). 

 Characters. — Size medium ; flippers very short, measuring 

 only one-eleventh of the total length of the head and body ; 

 general colour of the upper-parts bluish-black, with oblong 

 light-coloured spots ; under-parts more or less white ; tail, 

 flippers, and whale-bone black, but the curling bristly ex- 

 tremities of the latter white. Total length about 50 feet, or 

 rather less. 



Distribution. — In the Atlantic, Rudolphi's Rorqual is a more 

 northern species than either of the preceding, being very 

 abundant in summer in the neighbourhood of the North Cape, 

 where at that season it is a regular visitant, and apparently not 

 known to range further south than the coast of Biarritz. 



It will be found stated in the second edition of Bell's 

 " British Quadrupeds " that a Whale stranded at Charmouth, 

 Dorsetshire, in February 1840, not improbably pertained to 

 this species; but Sir William Turner ("Journ. Anatomy and 

 Physiology," 1892, p. 473) is of opinion that it was more pro- 

 bably an example of the Common Rorqual. A Rorqual 

 stranded in the Isle of Islay in 1866, the skull and some other 



