MISCELLANEOUS NOTES 273 



and others, giving them such a chase as had never 

 before taxed their agility and boatmanship. In one 

 of its wildest dashes the frightened animal smashed 

 its nose, and then, profusely bleeding, it was driven 

 between the "dolphins" (a kind of landing stage) 

 and the quayside piles, where it was attacked with 

 iron creepers, boathooks, and other improvised 

 weapons, and secured also by ropes, and made a 

 complete and helpless prisoner. In about an hour 

 it had succumbed to its injuries, when it was towed 

 to the lifeboat shed and hauled upon the stocks 

 by means of the windlass. Here for a day or two 

 it was exhibited to great numbers of townsfolk, and 

 afterwards given a public post mortem dissection, to 

 the no small gain of those who had secured it. The 

 skin was afterwards stuffed by a local taxidermist, 

 and taken for a short time on tour, spending the 

 winter in the late Royal Westminster Aquarium, 

 and the following summer in a large building on 

 the Marine Parade at Yarmouth, where the writer 

 made a fair summer's earnings by exhibiting it to 

 many hundreds of visitors. "The Gorleston 

 Whale" was talked of far and near. The animal 

 was 30 feet long; 18 feet in girth; span of tail, 



8 feet 2 inches; length of pectoral fins, 4 feet 6 

 18 



