SPERM-WHALE. 417 



Flower, have almost invariably been old bulls, which had 

 probably been driven from the herds or shoals, like the 

 " rogue Elephants " of India, and forced to live a solitary 

 and wandering life. Occasionally, however, a whole 

 herd has strayed as far as Europe ; a *' school " which 

 entered the Adriatic in 1853 is recorded by Heckel, and 

 in the last century no less than thirty-one were stranded 

 on the coast of Bretagne. 



In Britain a considerable number of occurrences have 

 been recorded from the time of Gesner up to the present 

 day, both on the English and on the Scotch and Irish 

 coasts, of which we shall only note those in which the 

 animal was best observed. One ran ashore in the Firth 

 of Forth in 1769, and an excellent figure and description 

 was published by Mr. Robertson of Edinburgh in the 

 " Philosophical Transactions." In 1788 no less than six 

 were found dead on the Kentish coast, and others on the 

 shores of Holland, after a northerly gale ; these were all 

 decayed, but a live one ran ashore at the same time in 

 the River Thames {Letter to Sir J. Banks, quoted by 

 Dr. Gray). A large male was stranded at Holderness, 

 Yorkshire, in 1825, and its skeleton is preserved in 

 the park at Burton-Constable, the seat of Sir Clifford 

 Constable, Bart. ; this specimen was described by Dr. 

 Alderston in the second volume of the " Cambridge 

 Philosophical Transactions," and the skeleton has since 

 been examined by Prof. Flower. Another old bull, sixty- 

 two feet in length, was cast up on the Kentish coast in 

 February 1829, and its skeleton was prepared for the 

 Zoological Society's Museum, but litigation arose as to 

 the ownership of this mighty " flotsam and jetsam," and 

 the bones were left on the shore till they were all washed 

 away by the waves. In May of the same year one was 

 captured in Argyleshire near Oban, and its jaws are still 



3 II 



