12 SPECIMENS OF GET ACE A. 



obviously also a Sperm Whale. In a manuscript addition to the copy 

 of the Phalainolo(jia Nova in the Library of the Royal College of 

 Physicians, Edinburgh, are two figures of a Sperm Whale taken at 

 Monifieth, February 23, 1703; they are believed to have been 

 prepared for a new edition of the PhalainoJogia which was not 

 published. Sibbald also gave an account of small whales, with teeth 

 in both jaws, captured in 1690 and 1691 at Culross, Blackness, and 

 Kirkcaldy. Some were 20 to 25 feet long, and he styled them Orcse. 

 He also speaks of twenty-five small whales, which ranged from 10 

 to 12 feet in length, being cast ashore in 1690 on Cramond Island, 

 Some may possibly have been of the genus which we now call Orca, 

 others Globicephalus. Sibbald published in 1697, with the title 

 Auctarium Musxi BaJfouriani e Musseo Sihhahliano, a catalogue of 

 the specimens collected by Sir Andrew Balfour and himself. Fifteen 

 of these were derived from the Whalebone Whales, the Sperm Whale, 

 and the Orcas described in the Phalainologia Nova ; they probably 

 constituted the first cetological collection made in Scotland. 



During the eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth 

 the stranding and capture of occasional isolated specimens were 

 recorded. Mr James Paterson, the keeper of the Balfourian Museum, 

 stated that in 1701 a male Sperm Whale nearly 52 feet long "came 

 in at Crawmond." In 1769 Mr James Robertson described a male 

 Sperm Whale, 54 feet long, also stranded on Cramond Island. In 

 1756 another was said to have come ashore on the west coast of 

 Ross-shire. 



Professor John Walker examined a Rorqual cast ashore at Burnt- 

 island in June 1761, the sex of which was not determined. It was 

 46 feet long ; the pectoral limb was 5 feet long and 9 inches in 

 greatest breadth ; the tail was \\^ feet in transverse diameter; the 

 distance from the dorsal fin to the insertion of the tail was 10 feet 

 10 inches ; the height of the falciform dorsal fin was 2 feet 10 inches, 

 whilst at the root it measured 2 feet 7 inches ; the longest baleen 

 plates were 2 feet, their breadth was 6 inches, and they were said 

 to be "nigra splendentes" (Proc. Soc. for Investigating Natural 

 History, Edinburgh, 1782, No. 13, p. 91). From the colour of the 

 baleen, it was probably an immature B. sihhaldi. 



Two White Whales were recorded as cast ashore in 1793, east 

 of Thurso. One was killed in 1815 on the Foi'th near Stirling, 

 and was described by Dr Barclay and Mr Patrick Neill. More 

 recently, in 1845, one was stranded at Auskerry, one of the Orkneys. 

 The discovery of the skull in 1800 near Brodie House, Moray Firth, 

 by Mr Sowerby, gave us the first specimen of Mesoplodon bidens, or 

 Sowerby's Whale. The Rev. Dr Fleming described in 1808 a 

 Narwhal obtained at the Sound of Weesdale in Shetland ; but 

 Tulpius had recorded, so far back as 1648, the capture of a specimen 

 near the Isle of May, at the entrance to the Forth. Dr Traill 

 established in 1809 the frequent occurrence of tlie Pilot Whale, 

 Globicephalus vielas, in the Orkneys. In a volume of Essays on 

 natural history, published in 1808, Professor Walker included 



