272 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
substituting, where possible, better figures of some of the species, 
has produced a very useful handbook on the subject. 
The claims of certain species, such as the Greenland and 
Bladder-nosed Seals, to be considered British have been 
strengthened by the production of additional evidence of their 
recent occurrence here, and the author makes out a very 
good case on behalf of the Atlantic Right Whale (Balena 
biscayensis), which he considers is occasionally met with in 
British waters, and which has in all probability been mis- 
taken for the Greenland species, Balena mysticetus. He gives 
a new figure of this, or at least a figure that will be new to 
most English readers, being a reduced copy of the coloured 
plate in Capellini’s memoir on a Whale of this species which was 
captured in the Bay of Taranto in February, 1877. As the 
original of this plate was a carefully executed water-colour 
drawing made from the animal itself, it may be regarded as the 
most reliable figure of the species at present obtainable. 
Some of Mr. Southwell’s chapters strike us as being not 
so complete as they might be made. Such, for instance, are the 
chapters on the Beaked Whale, Hyperoodon rostratus, and the 
Broad Fronted Beaked Whale, H. latifrons. In ‘ The Zoologist’ 
for 1878 (pp. 13-—-15) is a detailed description, with accurate 
measurements, by Mr. Henry Lee, of a specimen of the former 
species, which was killed in the Menai Strait in September, 1877. 
This account, it seems to us, might have been quoted with 
advantage by Mr. Southwell, since it embodies many details of 
interest which he has not noticed. 
Again, we remark that several of Mr. Southwell’s descriptions 
are too brief to enable an identification of the species. This is 
to be regretted, for, as the volume is exclusively devoted to 
British Seals and Whales, it would have been easy to make it so 
complete as to render it practically unnecessary for the student to 
refer to other sources of information. 
Nevertheless, Mr. Southwell has brought together, in a 
convenient form, a good deal of interesting information about 
our marine mammalia, which, it may be hoped, will have the 
effect of stimulating further enquiry and observation of the 
habits of many species about which we have still much to learn. 
