322 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



" Pallas " to that port, mentioning the various birds and beasts as 

 they were met with, and reserving for another number of ' The 

 Zoologist' a summary of the species, with some critical notes. 



July 23rd. Without stopping to enumerate all the birds to 



be seen, or rather those we saw, at Tromso, I may mention that 



the species characteristic of the place, whenlying at anchor off the 



town, are Kichardson's Skuas and Kittiwakes ; by the date of our 



return here the Skuas had almost entirely left. It is always 



a difficulty with me to know the exact meaning of such epithets 



as " common" and " abundant," when used in local lists of birds, 



but I think these words might be fairly employed in speaking of 



the White-tailed Eagle along this part of the coast. We started 



for the north during the afternoon, and as we steamed along, we 



observed Common Guillemots, Kittiwakes, Richardson's Skuas, 



a few Puffins, and Chapman saw two Little Auks at different 



places in the Fjord. At one place in the Fjord we saw from the 



ship a lot of tame Reindeer on the hill-side. Two large whales 



were spouting close to the ship in the evening ; these I set down 



at the time as " Finners," i. e. the Common Rorqual {Balcenoptera 



musculus, Linn.). Certainly the majority, and I believe all, without 



exception, of the whales that we saw, both off the coast of Norway 



and in the ocean to the north of that country, had dorsal fins. 



On reading in Nordenskibld's ' Voyage of the Vega' (vol. i., p. 170, 



English edition) that Sibbald's Rorqual {Balcenoptera Sibbaldii, 



J. E. Gray) is the commonest species off the coast of Finmark, 



or is at least almost exclusively the only species hunted there, and 



other accounts,* I suppose it likely that some at least of the largest 



of the whales seen by us off the north-west of Norway belonged 



to this species. But on examining the available figures of various 



species of whale, it seems to me that the Killer (Orca gladiator, 



Lacepede) is, from the rounded contour of the back, the broad 



flukes of the tail, and especially from the shape of the high dorsal 



fin, much more like those individuals that we saw most distinctly. 



However, I have little doubt that we saw more than one species, 



perhaps all these three, and, farther south, what may have been 



Pilot Whales (Ca'ing, or Bottle-noses = Globiocephalus melas, 



* See the account of this Whale in ' The Fauna of Scotland,' Part I., 

 Mammalia,' by the late Mr. Alston; also Bell's 'British Quadrupeds' (2nd 

 edition), and Mr. Southwell's ' Seals and Whales of the British Islands.' 



