12 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



skeleton of wliicli is in the Goteborg Museum, as of a dark 

 slate-colour, with greyish white, irregularly scattered spots, 

 especially on tlie ventral aspect. Mr Thomas Anderson, who 

 saw the carcase of the Shetland specimen described by me 

 in 1881, stated that the back was dark bluish-grey or slate- 

 coloured, becoming lighter on the sides and whitish on the 

 belly, and that grey or whitish streaks and spots, often 

 circular, were irregularly scattered over the sides. Carl Auri- 

 villius, in his account ^ of the young male caught in August 

 1885 (3870 mm., 12J feet long), says that the skin on the 

 back and sides was black-blue passing into lead-colour, and 

 below it was bluish-grey but not whitish. Further, he states 

 that its colour corresponded more with Sowerby's figure than 

 with those of Dumortier and F. Cuvier. The animal, pro- 

 bably a male, captured at the mouth of the Humber in 1885, 

 w^as reported to Messrs Southwell and Clarke ^ as being " very 

 dark slate-colour, or nearly black on the top of the head 

 and along the back, the sides a lighter shade of slate-colour 

 and the under part much lighter still, but not quite white ; 

 the end of the beak and lower jaw rather lighter in colour 

 than the upper portion of the head." There can, I think 

 therefore, be no doubt, from the concurrent testimony of 

 several observers, that this animal is not of the deep black 

 colour on the dorsum which one sees in Hyperoodon, but that 

 the dark hue is dashed with a bluish tint, so that one may 

 describe the prevailing colour of the back as dark bluish- 

 grey or bluish-slate colour. The grey or wdiitish, almost 

 circular spots which were noticed by Mr Thomas Anderson 

 in one of the Shetland specimens, and by myself in this 

 animal caught in the Forth, are obviously also characteristic 

 markings on the skin. The belly is not white but of various 

 shades of grey, dashed perhaps with a bluish tint. The 

 tail and pectoral limbs were similar in colour and shape to 

 those in the specimen described by me in 1885, so that I 

 need not repeat their characters on this occasion. As the 

 dorsal fin had been cut away in that specimen, I did not 

 see it ; but in the present animal this fin was preserved and 



^ K. Svciiska Vet.-Akad. Haiulliiigar, Band 11, No, 10. October 1885. 

 - Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist., January 1886. 



