SOME MAMMALIAN NOTES 345 



A CETACEAN MIGRATION 



A somewhat remarkable movement of cetaceans, presum- 

 ably porpoises, took place in March, 1906, a big procession 

 of them being observed swimming through the roadstead. 

 Various reports reached me respecting them, some persons 

 insisting that they were " scoulters " (white-beaked dolphins) 

 and that they were at least twenty feet in length. Allowance 

 must be made for the difficulty of judging the length of 

 moving objects in the sea. I made inquiries with a view of 

 ascertaining whether others had observed them further north 

 of the county, but met with no response. Mr. Lowne, a local 

 naturalist, assured me that he saw this shoal on the after- 

 noon of Sunday the iQth; he believed them to be porpoises; 

 they appeared to be about six feet in length, and their ranks 

 extended almost from the Wellington Pier to the St. Nicholas 

 lightship a distance of considerably over a mile. They 

 sprang out of the water three or four at a time. The 

 water was perfectly calm, and any shoals of "spring" 

 herrings in their line of march must have fared very badly. 



