NOTES AND QUERIES. 191 



wrote to Mr. Storr of that town, who was mainly instrumental in its 

 capture, and from his replies, thinking it possible the animal might be 

 BalcBHoptera horealis, I took an early opportunity of visiting Skegness, and 

 was somewhat disappointed at seeing on the beach a young female of the 

 Common Rorqual or " Razorback," Balmioptera musculus. The animal 

 measured 47 ft. in length, and the only remarkable feature about it was 

 the unusually light colour of the baleen, which showed much less of the 

 characteristic slate colour veined with darker and lighter shades of the same 

 than in any specimen of this species which I have seen. This may have 

 been owing either to the juvenility of the animal, which was little more 

 than two-thirds grown, or it may have been sexual, or even the result of 

 individual variation. There seems to have been the usual misunder- 

 standing with the authorities, who claimed the whale on behalf of the 

 Crown, but it was eventually handed over to its captors, who, after 

 exhibiting it during the Easter holidays, sold it by auction for thirty 

 guineas. — T. Southwell (Norwich). 



[We learn from another correspondent, Mr. Degen, who personally 

 examined it, that, being half buried in soft sand and ooze, it was impossible 

 to take all the measurements that were desirable. He could only ascertain 

 that the extreme length was 47 ft., the length from centre of dorsal fin to 

 end of tail 13 ft., width of tail 8 ft., and circumference at dorsal fin 11 ft. 

 8 in. He arrived at the same conclusion as did Mr. Southwell, namely, 

 that it was an immature female of Balanoptera musculus. — Ed.] 



The West India Seal.— It will probably be of interest to the zoological 



portion of your readers to learn of the re-discovery — or the full discovery 



of the West Indian Seal, Monachus tropicalis. The history of this pinniped 

 is in brief as follows : — It was noticed by Columbus in his account of his 

 second voyage (1494) as having been found in some numbers on the rocky 

 isle of Alta Vela, off the southern shore of Hispauiola, where his sailors 

 killed eight of them for food. Later— in 1675— Dampier found this Seal 

 in abundance on the Alacram reefs, about eighty miles north of Yucatan. 

 At that time it was killed there in great numbers for its oil. The Seal then 

 remained unnoticed for over a century and a half, having no place whatever 

 in the writings of zoologists until 1843. Then Mr. Richard Hill published 

 an account of it in the 'Jamaica Almanac,' calling it the Pedro Seal, from 

 the Pedro Keys, sonae sixty miles south of Kingston, Jamaica, where he had 

 found it. A few years later Mr. P. H. Gosse obtained an imperfect skin 

 (without skull), which he sent to the British Museum, where it was described 

 by Dr. Gray in the ' Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London,' 

 1849. Dr. Gray gave it then no name, probably by reason of its imperfect 

 characters. Later— in 1850— (' Catalogue of Mammals in the British 

 Museum ') he described the same specimen as Phoca tropicalis, and after- 

 wards (' Catalogue of Seals and Whales,' 1866) as Monachus tropicalis. But 



