The Mammalian Fauna of the Edinburgh District. 163 
Forth, the line of black fins appearing and disappearing in 
regular succession must be familiar. I have seldom gone an 
excursion of any extent, in any part of the estuary and firth 
from Alloa to the Isle of May, without observing a school of 
half-a-dozen or more rolling along in characteristic manner. 
In May 1887, while exploring the precipitous coast between 
St Abb’s Head and Fast Castle in Berwickshire, I observed a 
couple of Porpoises fishing close in shore, and by remaining 
motionless for a few minutes had the pleasure of seeing them 
tumbling about in a pool within ten to twenty yards from 
the rock on which I stood. 
The Porpoise was well known to Sibbald as an inhabitant 
of both firths, and he shows, from a charter granted by 
Malcolm IV. in favour of the monks of Dunfermline, that in 
those days the head of the animal was esteemed a great 
delicacy, and that it had also an economic value for the sake 
of the oil (“ History of Fife and Kinross,” 1803 ed., pp. 116 
and 295). 
ORCA GLADIATOR (Lacép.). KILLER OR GRAMPUS. 
This species is probably a more frequent visitor to our 
waters than the few authentic records of its occurrence would 
lead us to suppose. Every now and then one hears of 
Grampuses being seen in the Firths, but owing to the vague 
way in which the name “ Grampus” is used by the seafaring 
population of the district, these statements can scarcely be 
taken into account. 
Sibbald, in his “ Phalainologia nova” (p. 7), records the 
occurrence of several “Orce” in the Forth (at Culross and 
Blackness) in May 1691, and from his description of the 
animals there can be no doubt they belonged to the present. 
species (Van Beneden so regards them in his “Histoire 
naturelle des Cétacés des mers d'Europe,” p. 441). 
In the Scots Magazine for October 1814 (p. 733), Patrick 
Neill gave an interesting account of a herd of “ Grampuses ” 
which appeared in the estuary of the Forth in the beginning 
of that month. On the 6th, fifteen of them were killed at the 
mouth of the Devon, about two miles above Alloa, and of 
