154 ESCHRICHT ON THE 



lateral surface tiinied upwards, a male of raerlium size (twenty-one and one third feet long). The 

 coloration so peculiar to the killers, always distinguished by a white mark above and behind 

 the eye, and by a large white symmetrical figure on the side above and behind the navel, 

 being a continuation of the white colour of the belly, had already struck me at a distance of 

 several hundred paces, and the contrast of the two colours seemed rather to have grown stronger, 

 than weaker, by putrefaction, most probably only because the external layer of the epidermis had 

 come off', thus exhibiting the deeper and more strongly coloured layers. 



The coloration agreed very well in the main with that of the well-known and excellent 

 figure given by Dr. Schlegel, from a specimen stranded in November, 1841, on the coast of 

 Holland.^ But no trades were discovered of the purple longitudinal stripe, which in that 

 specimen ran along the base of the back-fin,^ nor of the little white spot at the posterior corners 

 of both the pectoral fins. So far therefore, it agreed better with another very carefully 

 executed drawing, for which I am indebted to the kindness of Professor Steenstrup. Mr. 

 Thomsen, a teacher at the grammar-school at Randers, caused this figure to be executed 

 from a specimen stranded on the eastern coast of Jutland, in the middle of February, 1855, 

 being like Dr. Schlegel's specimen, a female, only thirteen feet long, and eight in circumference. 

 We are unable to decide how far the spot beneath the pectoral fins may have been present on 

 this specimen, but we are sure that the purple stripe under the back fin was also here completely 



^ ' Abhandlungen aus dem Gebiete derZoologie und vergleichendea Anatomie,' 2nd part, plates vii 

 and viii. 



" [A few words relative to this stripe may, perhaps, find a place here. Dr. Schlegel we know, 

 in his description of the Orca stranded at Wyk aan Zee, states expressly that no earlier observer 

 had either perceived or represented such a stripe in this species ; and it seems that my lamented 

 friend Professor Eschricht was of the same opinion. The assertion is, notwithstanding, unfounded, for 

 the killer caught in Lynn Harbour, November 19th, 1830, twelve years before the essay quoted above 

 was published by Dr. Schlegel, was distinguished by a similar stripe. 



I have not, indeed, been able to examine the original communication about this animal in 

 the fourth volume of ' Loudon's Magazine of Natural History,' written by an anonymous author, for 

 this periodical seems not to be found in our libraries ; but fortunately we have perfectly satisfactory 

 information ou the point in two authors of later date, Th. Bell and Dewhurst, both having made use 

 of the communication referred to in their respective works {' History of British Quadrupeds,' pp. 479-80, 

 and the ' Natural History of the Order Cetacea,' pp. 179-80), in both of which this peculiar stripe on the 

 back is particularly mentioned. Dewhurst's description is, moreover, illustrated by a figure of the 

 animal, which Loudon himself had placed at his disposal ; and in this woodcut the dorsal stripe is 

 represented with the very same peculiar outline that it had in Dr. Schlegel's Orca, according to the 

 latter author's desci'iption and figure. The only point as to which the dorsal mark of the Orca from 

 Lynn Harbour may have been different from that of the one from Wyk aan Zee might, perhaps, be the 

 colour ; for in the latter specimen it was, according to Schlegel, " schmutzig blaulich purpurfarben, und 

 hat gegen die Mitte des Riickens hin ein schieferartiges Ansehen ;" whereas that of the former is 

 described by Bell as "gray," and by Dewhurst as " silverish-gray." We need hardly add that no 

 particular importance ought to be ascribed to such a difference, 'even if it really existed ; but it is of 

 great consequence not to overlook this second instance of an Orca with gray or purple-gray dorsal stripe, 

 as the Orca from Lynn Harbour was a male with a high dorsal fin. The dorsal stripe may therefore 

 appear in high-finned males as well as in low-finned females. — 3. Heinhardt, 1865.] 



