348 Proceedings of the Boyal Physical Society. 



had a nipple slit on each side. The external auditory meatus 

 was no bigger than a pinhole. 



Although various specimens of the common dolphin have 

 been captured on the English coast, and Mr Couch has stated 

 that these animals come on the Cornish coast in considerable 

 numbers, more especially when the pilchards and mackerel 

 abound, yet there is a want of any definite information of its 

 occurrence in the Scottish seas. Fleming and Jenyns in 

 their systematic works on British animals, the author of the 

 volume on whales in Jardine's Naturalists' Library, and 

 Gray in his "Catalogue of Cetacea," are all silent on this 

 matter. In the second edition of Bell's " British Quadrupeds," 

 it is stated that the common dolphin appears to be much 

 rarer on the shores of the more northern parts of Britain 

 than in the south. Mr E. R. Alston, in his monograph on 

 " The Fauna of Scotland," Glasgow, 1880, says, that though 

 it probably occasionally visits the coasts of Scotland, as it 

 does those of Norway, yet that he has been unable to find a 

 single trustworthy account of its capture ; and Mr Thomas 

 Southwell, in his " Seals and Whales of the British Seas," 

 London, 1881, remarks that there is no reliable record of its 

 occurrence in Scottish waters. 



The capture of this specimen in the Firth of Forth enables 

 me now to make a definite statement on this matter, and to 

 say that Delphinus delphis is, without doubt, occasionally 

 found in the Scottish seas. There is indeed in the Museum 

 of Science and Art a stuffed skin, marked "Delphinus delphis, 

 Firth of Forth," which has been there for upwards of thirty 

 years. I have asked Dr Traquair if he could furnish me 

 with some account of this animal, but he is unable to do 

 so, as it was in the Museum long before his keepership. 

 This specimen is 4 feet 10 inches in extreme length, and its 

 sex cannot be determined. The skin has been coarsely 

 painted black on the back and sides, and white on the belly, 

 so that all the finer tints and shading have been destroyed. 



