9156. Birds. 
American whalers, except as regards its colour, "which, like the surrounding skin,’ 
was black when it was received, exuding oil and covered with whale-lice, fresh from 
a whaler at the Sandwich Islands. Temminck’s description of this curious pro- 
duction is very meagre, and amounts to little more than a statement of its presence on 
the nose of the particular species of whale. My brother fortunately brought home two 
specimens of the bonnet, one of them only six inches long, and showing in that early 
state of development essentially the same characters that mark the larger example. 
The external appearance of the specimens, especially in the larger one, is that of a 
clinker, as Mr. Buckland describes it, or perhaps, more strictly speaking, that of a 
large rough piece of black cork, deeply grooved and channelled, generally in the 
direction of its long axis, with a rude sort of symmetry, even in these irregularities of 
its surface. I will forgive Mr. Buckland his joke, although at the expense of the whale’s 
character. I understand that Professor Owen believes this “ bonnet” to be only a 
piece of diseased skin, and says that a similar specimen is in the museum of the Royal 
College of Surgeons: this specimen, however, cannot be discovered. The bonnet is 
undoubtedly a portion of the epidermis unusually thickened, and its growth is so far 
abnormal ; but its symmetrical form, and, according to the whalers, the constancy of 
its presence and position on the animal, point to something more than a state of disease, 
and incline me to rank it with those unintelligible formations,—the warts on the legs 
of a horse, or the still more remarkable protuberances on the face of the wart-hog. 
Three species of whale are hunted in the Pacific, and of these the “ right’ whale is 
found the furthest north; the sperm whale bas the greatest range southward, and 
between them is a species known as the “ bow-nosed ” whale—such is the information 
given by the Pacific whalers. It must be remembered that the “ right” whale of the 
Pacific—the one on which the bonnet is found—is not the familiar “ right” whale of 
the Greenland seas. I may add that my brother has seen several of these bonnets 
brought in by the whalers, and some of them three feet in length. Further inquiries 
are being made about the history of the whale’s bonnet, and I hope before long to 
obtain additional information about the mysterious subject —Z. W. H. Holdsworth.— 
* Field. 
The Birds of Walney Island. 
By J. Epmunp Harting, Esq., F.Z.S. 
Tue island of Walney is situated on the north-west coast of Lanca- 
shire, to the west of Low Furness, and is about nine miles long by a 
mile broad at its greatest breadth. It rises like a wall in the sea, and 
from this circumstance it appears to have derived its name, being 
called by the Saxons Waghney, Woney and Walney, or a wall in the 
water. 
Being an island only at high water, when the tide is out, it may be 
reached on foot from Barrow, from which it is distant about a quarter 
ofa mile. It contains four small hamlets, viz. North-end, North Scale, 
