156 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 
towns in Scotland and England. The skeleton was presented 
by Mr Woods to the Dundee Museum. Seeing this specimen, 
during its endeavours to effect its escape, is known to have 
approached within a few miles of the Carr Rock, the species 
may be given a place in the Forth fauna. 
BALANOPTERA SIBBALDI (Gray). SIBBALD’S RoRQUAL. 
Sibbald’s Rorqual, or the Blue Whale—the largest creature 
at present known to inhabit the globe—is another rare 
casual visitant to our shores, only three examples having 
been recorded during the present century. The large whale, 
78 feet long, stranded at Abercorn, in the estuary of the Forth, 
in September 1692, and recorded by Sibbald (“ Phalainologia 
nova,” p. 33), in all probability belonged, as has been pointed 
out by Sir William Turner, to this species. Three undoubted 
examples, however, have since occurred in the Forth. The 
first is the huge animal, 80 feet in length, whose skeleton 
hangs in the Museum of Science and Art, Edinburgh. It 
was found floating dead at the mouth of the Firth in October 
1831, and was towed ashore near North Berwick, and sold 
to Dr and Mr Knox, by whom it was dissected (see Proc. 
Roy. Soc. Edin., 1833, vol.i., p. 14). Another, which Professor 
Turner has identified from the nasal bones, preserved by Dr 
M‘Bain, was stranded on the Fife coast at Aberdour in 
July 1858 (Report of British Association, 1871, p. 144). And 
lastly, there comes the famous “ Longniddry 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 Firth 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 description of the animal 
in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Hdinburgh (xxvi., 
