46 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



been captured in the British Islands, or on the coasts of 

 France, Belgium, and Holland ; two or three have been taken 

 in August, but Vrolik's specimen was obtained at Landvoort 

 in July ; one of Sir James Paget's specimens was captured in 

 ISTovember, my Dunbar specimen early in November, and a 

 female recorded by Lilljeborg,^ caught in 1749 at Frederiks- 

 hall, on the coast of Norway, as late in the year as 

 17th November. The capture of this last-named animal 

 has an especial interest, as a picture of it was in the pos- 

 session of Linnpeus. Lilljeborg states, on the authority of 

 Professor Nilsson, that a female about 26 feet long was 

 stranded at Landskrona, in Sweden, in April 1823 : pro- 

 bably this animal was migrating northwards for the summer 

 season. 



A few words may now be said as to the sex of the speci- 

 mens captured on the coasts of Western Europe. With very 

 few exceptions they have been females, and not unfrequently 

 each female has been accompanied by a young calf. But 

 occasionally an immature male has been secured. Thus the 

 specimen taken in Belfast Lough in October 1845, described 

 by Mr Wm. Thompson — that taken on the Devonshire coast 

 in September 1846, the skeleton of which is in the Museum 

 of the College of Surgeons of England — a specimen taken on 

 East Hoyle Bank, August 1853 — my specimen from Loch 

 Eanza, and my Dunbar specimen — were all males, and from 

 their length obviously young males ; for Captain Gray tells 

 us that the full-grown animal attains a length of 30 feet. 

 The only British specimens of an adult male are the Orkney 

 skull so frequently referred to, and the skull described by 

 Mr Southwell as brought up in a trawl off the coast of 

 Norfolk. Whilst in the Museum at Copenhagen is a skeleton 

 from the Feroe Islands, recorded by Professor Eschricht ; ^ 

 and in the Museum at Caen is a specimen wath unusually 

 thick crests, taken on the coast of Normandy.^ Apparently 

 the old males, in their autumn migration southward, and in 



1 Memoir translated in Ray Society Publications, p. 247. 

 '^ On the Gangetic Dolphin, Annals and JMagazine Natural Hist., April, 

 1852, vol, ix., p. 281. 



3 Prof. Gervais in '' Osteographie des Cetaces," p. 359, 



