30 Proceedings of the Boyal Physical Society. 



line from the tip of the mandible to the most projecting part 

 of the occipital condyle was 5 feet 4J inches. 



Owing to a careless reading of Mr Wm. Thompson's article, 

 in which reference is made to this specimen of Hyperoocloii, 

 the late Dr J. E. Gray, in his paper " On the Genus 

 Hyperoodon : the Two British Kinds and their Food," ^ wrote 

 that it was obtained on the 29th October 1839. He repeated 

 this error twice in his " Catalogue of Seals and Whales," 

 pp. 331, 339 ; and those authors who have followed his 

 guidance without referring to the original authority have 

 again repeated it, so that it is now wide spread in cetological 

 literature.^ In future I hope that the correct date (1845) 

 will be given when this specimen is referred to. 



In August 1871 a Hyperoodon was stranded alive at 

 Fraserburgh, on the coast of Aberdeenshire. Dr Struthers 

 has recorded ^ some particulars of this specimen. It measured 

 along the curve of the back 20 feet 9 inches, and in a straight 

 line 19 feet 3 inches. It was believed to be a male, though 

 its sex was not precisely ascertained. It was not an adult, 

 for the epiphyses of the bodies of the movable vertebrae were 

 all separate. 



With the exception of a skull from the Orkneys in the 

 British Museum,* of which more will be said further on, no 

 Scotch specimen of a Hyperoodon, in addition to those referred 

 to, has, up to the reading of this paper, been put on record.^ 



I shall proceed, therefore, now to describe several speci- 

 mens which have come under my own observation. In 

 August 1871 I received, through one of my pupils, Mr Millen 

 Coughtrey, a telegram from Mr John Anderson of Hillswick, 

 Shetland, dated August 11th, that a whale had just been 

 brought into Hamna Voe. From the description and sketch 



1 Proc. Zool. Soc. of London, vol. xxviii., p. 424, 1860. 



2 See, amongst others. Bell's " British Quadrupeds." 

 ■^ Journ. of Anat. and Phys. , vol. viii., p. 119. 



4 This skull was originally described by Dr J. E. Gray in a short paper 

 " On British Cetacea" in "Annals and Mag. of ISTat. Hist.," vol. xvii., p. 83, 

 1846. The name which he gave it was Hyperoodon hunteri. 



5 Since the above was in type, Mr Thos. Southwell has informed me that a 

 male Hyperoodon, exhibited in the Westminster Aquarium, was said to have 

 been taken in December 1881, off Aberdeen. 



