PORPOISFS. 285 



to a place in the British Fauna, although a few individuals have 

 been stranded on the Scottish coasts, and there is some 

 evidence of one having been seen off Devonshire. The first 

 record relates to two young specimens stated to have been 

 washed ashore in the Pentland Firth in the summer of 1793. 

 A second example was killed in the Firth of Forth, where it 

 had been seen for three months, in June, 1815 ; and the third 

 was found off dead on the Island of Auskerry, in the Orkneys, 

 in the autumn of 1845. In June, 1878, a large white Cetacean, 

 which could scarcely have been anything else than an example 

 of this species, was seen in Loch Etive ; while a year later a 

 fine example was found caught by the flukes between two posts 

 to which a stake-net was attached, about three miles to the 

 westward of Dunrobin, in Sutherlandshire, a description of 

 which is given by Sir W. H. Flower in the "Proceedings " of the 

 Zoological Society for 1879. According to Messrs. Harvie- 

 Brown and Buckley, a White Whale was repeatedly seen in 

 the Kyle of Tongue in August, 1880; and another was taken 

 alive in the salmon-nets off Dunbeath in April, 1884, its skeleton 

 being now preserved in the museum of Aberdeen University. 



The only record of the occurrence of this species on the 

 English coasts is on the authority of Gosse, who, when off 

 Berry Head in the summer of 1832, reports having seen a 

 White Cetacean w^hich he regarded as a Beluga. 



THE PORrOISES. GENUS PHOC/ENA. 



PhoccBua^ Cuvier, Regne Animal, vol. i. p. 279 (181 7). 



Skull with the beak rather short, broad at the base and taper- 

 ing towards the muzzle ; teeth small, with spade-like crowns 

 marked off from the roots by a constriction, their number 

 varying from sixteen to twenty-six pairs in each jaw, of which 

 they occupy nearly the whole length ; neck short, and (as in 



