Occurrence of the Bottle- Nosed or Beaked Whale. 31 



which Mr Anderson subsequently sent me in a letter, I 

 gathered that the animal was a Hyperoodon, and I purchased 

 the skull and so much of the rest of the skeleton as had been 

 preserved, and placed the bones in the Anatomical Museum 

 of the University. Mr Anderson wrote to me that " the 

 whole length of the whale, from the tip of the nose to the 

 tail,. was 23^ feet, and the spread of the tail was 4 J feet. 

 The upper and lower jaws were very small and pointed. The 

 beak was 1 foot 9 inches from the tip to the end of the 

 opening of the mouth. The head rose abruptly from the 

 base of the beak. The dorsal fin w^as behind the middle of 

 the back." That this whale was Hyperoodon rostratus I at 

 once recognised when the skull reached me, and from the 

 complete ossification of the vertebrae it w^as obviously an 

 adult specimen. I received no information as to its sex, but 

 it was most probably an adult female. 



In 1879 I read in the /S'co^fsma^i newspaper, September 24th, 

 that a whale had been captured at Grangemouth, on the 

 Firth of Forth, on the previous day. I went to see the 

 animal, and made some notes of its dimensions and appear- 

 ance. It was a female Hyperoodon rostratus, and its greatest 

 length in a straight line was 26 feet. Its greatest girth two 

 feet behind the pectoral limb, w^as 15 feet. From the angle 

 of the mouth to the tip of the upper jaw, 24 inches ; and 

 from the same to the tip of the lower jaw, 25^ inches. The 

 blow-hole was transverse, and situated 7 inches behind a line 

 drawn vertically from the eye to the top of the head. The 

 head swelled out into an eminence at the base of the beak, 

 and contrasted strongly with the attenuated beak and short 

 cleft of the mouth. The falcate dorsal fin, 19 inches high, 

 was behind the middle of the back, and a line from its 

 anterior border fell vertically 9 inches in front of the vulva. 

 From the umbilicus to the front of the vulva was 3 feet 

 6 inches. A nipple was seen on each side of the vulva, and 

 the anus was immediately behind it. The breadth in a 

 straight line between the lobes of the tail was 6 feet 4 inches. 

 The body was cylindriform between the pectoral limb and 

 dorsal fin, and was laterally compressed from the region of 

 the dorsal fin to the root of the tail. In colour the animal 



