Porpoise and Killer Whale. 29 



the recorded examples of each have been correctly identified ? 

 It has been found in the Thames Estuary, below the Nore, at 

 Harwich (River Orwell), near Brightlingsea, and several times 

 up the Colne and elsewhere, besides a male, female and young 

 in the Blackwater in 1878 (Fitch), while a skull (semi-fossil) 

 was discovered at Herne Bay. As to food, whiting, cod, 

 haddock, conger eels, garfish, crabs, cuttlefish, and even whelk 

 remains, have been recognised among its dietary. 



(5) The COMMON PORPOISE (Phocccna communis) may truly 

 bo said to be seldom absent in one part or another of the Kent 

 and Essex waters. They are keen, wary fishers, and hunt about 

 in small " schools " regularly at the mouths of the Thames, 

 Medway, Roach, Blackwater and Colne, as also Harwich neigh- 

 bourhood. Occasionally London receives a visit from them, 

 and they have been known to go beyond to as far as Mort- 

 lake, and even to Teddington Lock.* During the summers of 

 1886 to 1889, first one and then several porpoises daily 

 nshed in the still water at the angle of Dover Pier, and 

 latterly the family, young and old, seemed to get accustomed to 

 the crowds of spectators watching their movements. f Por- 

 poises seem to keep pretty well clear of the shrimp-trawlers' 

 gear; but in summer, 1898 a Leigh whitebaiter (H. Wilder) 

 caught a young one, 4 feet long, in his drag-net below 

 Southend. During the whitebait season they often rush close 

 inshore after the bait or its fishy enemies, and we have seen 

 them at high water rollicking about near the Crow Stone. 

 Shoaling fish, as sprat, herring and whiting, they pursue 

 vigorously. The porpoise's average size is from 5 to 7 feet. 



(6) The KILLER WHALE (Orca Gladiator) reaches from 15 to 

 over 30 feet in length. A specimen measuring 31 feet was slain at 

 Greenwich in 1793, and others are recorded as taken in the 

 Blackwater. This rapacious, nay dangerous, animal, not 

 inaptly, is regarded as a terror of the ocean, being a constant 

 devourer of porpoises, seals and codfish, &c., which it swallows 

 whole. When in numbers they even successfully attack the 



* "Echo," issue 27th Aug., 1892. t Webb, " Handbook to Dover." 



