discovered in Cornwall, 441 



was the tin-ground, on account of which the excavations 

 were made, lying on hard rock composed of blue killas, at a 

 depth altogether of about 60 feet from the surface, the greater 

 part of which is below the present sea-level. These conditions 

 appear to indicate that at one period the spot was occupied by 

 dry land, and was the site of a forest — that it subsequently 

 became submerged to a considerable depth below the sea, 

 at which period the whale would be stranded — and that it 

 has since been restored to the land, either by elevation or by 

 accumulation of sand driven up by the sea, together with 

 gravel washed down from the neighbouring hills. As to the 

 date of the whale's stranding, I will not venture to offer a 

 conjecture ; but the evidence is conclusive as to its having 

 been subsequent to the occupation of the country by man and 

 recent animals, as the red deer. 



The bones mentioned by Mr. Colenso are all now in the 

 museum at Penzance, and are (1) the right ramus of the 

 mandible or lower jaw, (2) a lumbar vertebra, (3) a humerus, 

 (4) a radius, (5 & 6) two metacarpals. There is every reason 

 to suppose that they have belonged to the same individual, 

 and to an animal which had probably attained its full size, 

 though the disk-like terminal epiphyses of the vertebra had 

 not yet coalesced with the body. At the time of their dis- 

 covery, they were rightly identified as having belonged to " a 

 large whale ;" but they have never been fully described, nor 

 has the species to which they belong been ascertained. During 

 a recent visit to Penzance, I had the opportunity, through the 

 kindness of the officers of the Society, of making an examina- 

 tion of them ; and I propose to present the results in a com- 

 plete form to the next meeting of the Society, that the full 

 description of the bones may appear in the same series of 

 publications which contains the account of the geological fea- 

 tures of the spot in which they were found ; but in the mean 

 time I think it desirable that an abstract of these results 

 should be placed on record. 



It is perfectly evident that these bones belong to no species 

 of whale known to inhabit the British seas ; indeed the pecu- 

 liar form of the mandible and the relative proportions of the 

 different bones to each other exclude not only all these, but all 

 known existing whales. On turning to the published descrip- 

 tions of skeletons of whales supposed to be extinct, it was 

 with much interest that I was able to identify them with those 

 of a specimen found under remarkable and somewhat similar 

 circumstances in the Swedish island of Griiso, in the Baltic. 

 In this case, fortunately, the skeleton was far moi'c complete 

 than in the Pentuan specimen ; and as all the bones have been 



Ann. & Mag. N. Hist. Ser.4. Fo?. ix. 30 



