A HISTORY OF DURHAM 





in the reign of Charles II. that the stranding 

 of this whale occurred. The authors quoted 

 above also record that ' the atlas of another 

 individual of this species was recently found 

 by Edward Backhouse, Esq., buried at some 

 depth in the sand near Scaton.' 



39. Bottle-Nosed or Beaked Whale. Hy- 



peroodon rostratus, Chemnitz. 

 Bell Hype root/on Butzkopf. 



A skeleton of this species was found in the 

 bed of theTyne near Newcastle in 1857, and 

 is described in the Transactions of the Tyneside 

 Field Club, iv. This is one of the commoner 

 whales in British seas and has probably often 

 visited the Durham coast. One was captured 

 only just north of the Tyne about 1850. 



40. White Whale Beluga. Delphinapterw 



leucas y Pallas. 



Bell Beluga leueat. 



This forms the most recent and perhaps the 

 most interesting addition to the cetacean fauna 

 of the county. A full grown male, fourteen 

 feet in length, was captured at the South 

 Shields sands on 10 June, 1903, and after a 

 prolonged struggle was landed at North 



Shields. Its skeleton is in the Newcastle 

 Museum. 



Full details and a photograph are given in 

 the Transactions of the local natural history 

 society 1 by Mr. A. Meek, M.Sc., who 

 also reports the fact that since this capture 

 another white whale, possibly the mate, has 

 been seen at various points off the coast from 

 Northumberland down to Flamborough Head. 

 This is the first recorded occurrence of the 

 species on the east coast south of the Forth. 



41. Grampus. Orca gladiator, Lacpede. 

 Bell Pboctfna orca. 



I know of no instance of the actual strand- 

 ing of an individual of this species on the 

 Durham coast, but it is by no means uncom- 

 mon in the North Sea. I saw a grampus, or 

 at least its unmistakable dorsal fin, on one 

 occasion during the summer of 1901 a few 

 miles off the coast. Sir Cuthbert Sharp* men- 

 tions the grampus in a list of local animals. 



42. Porpoise. Phoctena communis, Cuvier. 



Porpoises arc abundant off the Durham 

 coast. 



1 Train. Nat. Hist. Sot. Nortbumb. and Durham (new ser.), i. 

 History of Hartlepool, 1816. 



I 9 7 



