INTRODUCTION. 



11 



inquiry is the left mandible of a whale with sockets for large teeth. 

 From a comparison of the mandible with the jaws of the Odontoceti 

 in the Anatomical Museum, it is from an Orca gladiator. Though 

 injured at the tip of the symphysis and at the condylar end, its 

 length was 32 inches, and the empty sockets for eleven teeth were 

 at tlie symphysial end. As the outer wall of the sockets was broken 

 away, their cavities were exposed. The largest socket was 31 inches 

 deep,' and 1} inch in antero-posterior diameter. The symphysis was 

 rough, 7| inches long and 2| inches broad. The mandible behind 

 the°last Wket was 11 inches in vertical diameter (figure, p. 10). 

 This is the first locality from which fossilised remains of the Killer 

 Whale (Orca) have been recognised in Scotland. 



Professor Cossar Ewart has carefully examined the other mammalian 

 remains from the same spot and has named them — two skulls of 

 broad-browed ponies of the forest type ; skull of a ram of the peat 

 or turf type {Ovis paliistris) ; skull of a dog in size resembling a 

 greyhound ; and an imperfect antler like that of a reindeer. 



The first naturalist to wa-ite a detailed account of the large whales 

 which frequent the Scottish seas in modern times was Sir Robert 

 Sibbald, one of the founders of the Royal College of Physicians, 

 Edinburgh, and author of works on local history, geography, and 

 natural objects. He published in 1692, with illustrations, a volume 

 entitled Phalamologia Nora sice Obserrationes de Baleenis in Scofise 

 littus nuper ejectis. In it he gave an excellent account of a Rorqual, 

 78 feet long,' a male, stranded in September 1692, near the castle of 

 Abercorn, on the Firth of Forth. The configuration and dimensions 

 of the head and body and the l)lack colour of the baleen plates and 

 bristles Avere so precisely described that one readily recognises it as 

 a typical specimen of the great whale which is now appropriately 

 named Sibbald's Whale, Balsiioptera sihhaldi. 



Another Rorqual, a male, 46 feet long, was stranded in November 

 1690 to the west of Burntisland. Its length was proportioned to 

 its girth, and its form was more slender than the Abercorn specimen. 

 Th^ head was slightly oblong, and the snout was midAvay between 

 the acute and the obtuse. The baleen plates were not described. 

 Its length exceeded B. rostrafa and B. boreali^. The upright dorsal 

 fin and the short pectoral limb proved that it was not Megaptera ; 

 its more slender form and the shape of the beak showed it not to 

 be B. sihhaldi, so that it was prol)ably an immature B. vmscu/ns. A 

 character was given by Sibbald which he regarded as peculiar, 

 that the nares were not situated on the head, but in the beak C feet 

 8 inches from the extremity of the superior maxilla. 



Sibbald recorded the stranding of a male Sperm Whale about 52 

 feet long, in February 1689, at Limekilns, on the Firth of Forth. 

 Also a female on one of the Orkney Islands in 1687, the head' of 

 which was 8 or 9 feet high. Its length was not given. From the 

 form of the head, the position of the blowhole, the arrangement of 

 the teeth, and the spermaceti obtained from the head, this animal was 



