26 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



kind, 21 feet long, was caught about the same time near the 

 mouth of the same channel at Braclwell-juxta-Mare. In 

 1783 the famous John Hunter obtained a female specimen 

 in the Thames, many points in the anatomy of which are 

 described in his classical essay "On the structure and 

 economy of whales," ^ and the skeleton of which is preserved 

 in the Hunterian collection in the Museum of the Eoyal 

 College of Surgeons of England. Since that date other speci- 

 mens have from time to time been recorded as seen on 

 the English coast. For example, Mr James (now Sir James) 

 Paget, in his Catalogue of the Fauna and Flora of Yarmouth,^ 

 states that one was caught in November 1816, and a smaller 

 specimen about twenty years before ; one was captured in 

 the Humber in 1837, the skeleton of which is in the Hull 

 Museum;^ one in September 1839 at Flimby, near Cocker- 

 mouth;* probably another on East Hoyle Bank, also in 

 September 1839 ; apparently a female, taken at Aust Passage, 

 on the Severn, in October 1840, the skeleton of which has 

 been preserved in the Bristol Institution ; ^ a young male 

 on the coast of Devonshire in September 1846, the 

 skeleton of which is in the Museum of the College of 

 Surgeons of England ; ^ three specimens near Liverpool 

 in 1850, 1852, and 1853 respectively;^ that caught at 

 East Hoyle Bank in the month of August 1853 is said 

 to have been a male ; one in September 1858 at the 

 entrance to the river Ouse, and in September 1867 a female 



^ Philosopliical Transactions, 1787 ; also tlie "Works of Jolm Hunter, vol. 

 iv., p. 331. 



^ Sketch of the Natural History of Yarmouth and its neighbourhood. By 

 C. J. and James Paget, Yarmouth, 1834. 



2 William Thompson in Charlesworth's Magazine of Natural History, 

 London, 1838, vol. ii., p. 221. 



^ The notice of this and the following specimen is quoted from newspaper 

 paragraphs in Mr William Thompson's article on I5ottle-Nosed Whales in 

 Annals of Natural History, vol. iv., p. 375, 1840, See also his Natural 

 History of Ireland, vol. iv., p. 46 et seq. 



s J. E. Gray in Zoology of Voyage of "Erebus" and "Terror," p. 52, pi. 

 iii, ; and Catalogue of Seals and Whales, p. 333. 



6 Catalogue of Osteology and Dentition of Mammals, part ii. , p. 557, 

 London, 1884. 



7 The Fauna of Liverpool, by Isaac Byerley, as an Appendix to Proc. Lit. 

 and Phil. Soc. of Liverpool, 1854. 



