IlIGH-FINNED CACHALOT. 55 



holding her by the harpoon : he had for some time ill success, from firing when 

 too near, for the harpoon does not then fly true, but at 14 or 15 yards' distance, 

 which is what he would choose, it flies straight; lias killed several at 25 yards." 



Other interesting particulars are given, and it is finally remarked : — 



" I have been the more particular in giving an account of this undertaking, 

 because the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, &c. in London has long since 

 given premiums for the invention of the gun-harpoon, supposing it to be ori- 

 ginal." P. 157. 



In Rutty's Natural Hiotory of the County of Dublin it is stated that 

 one of these whales — 



" was cast upon our coast in the year 1766, and the sperma was taken from it 

 and refined here in Dublin." Vol. i. p. 369. 



In 1837 Dr. R. Ball mentioned to me that he had often heard of an 

 immense whale which was taken or cast ashore at Youghal about seventy 

 years before that time. It was said to have been seventy feet in length, 

 and its height so great that his grandfather, a tall man, when on horse- 

 back beside the whale, held up his whip, and the top of it could not be 

 seen from the opposite side of the animal. The spermaceti was said to 

 have been carried away in buckets-full. 



Mr. John Nimmo (k Roundstone, Connemara, informed me in 1837, 

 that a spermaceti whale was driven ashore about fifteen years previously 

 in a sandy bay near that village. Mr. Martin, on whose pi'operty it was 

 stranded, was stated to have realized £50 by the spermaceti. 



HiGH-FlXNED Cachalot, P/u/seter Tursio, Linn. 



In the Annals of Natural History for November, 1846, vol. xviii., p. 310, 

 I published the following communication relative to this species : — 



" I am happy to be enabled to join my friend Professor Bell (see British Mam- 

 malia, p. 512) in maintaining the existence of this species, which Cuvier, from 

 the imsatisfactory nature of the data respecting it, believed to be fictitious : — 

 even yet no proper description or figure has been published. 



Professor Bell comes to his conclusion on information to which Cuvier had not 

 access, and which was communicated to him by IMi'. Barclay of Zetland. The 

 occurrence of the species on the coast of Ireland was made known to mc by 

 Capt. Thomas Walker, who replied as follows to a letter requesting the fullest 

 information on the subject: — •' Kilmore, Bridgetown, Wexford, July 2y, 1846: 

 — As to the high-finned Cachalots, I saw them myself about seven years ago, and 

 only know them to have been so from the descriptions in works of natural history 

 which I consulted to fnid out what they were. There were either live or seven 

 of them — I now forget which number, but I think the latter, and two of them 

 were mucli larger than the rust, apparently about twenty-live feet long, from 

 comparing them with the length of the boat in which I was. When first I saw 

 one I thought it was a cot [small flat-bottomed boat] at anchor with her tarred 

 sail made up to the mast ; more then rose, and they crossed in a long file the 

 bows of my boat so close, that I put about the boat (thougli of seven tons burden) 

 fearing they would upset her. When I i)ut about they were not more than 

 three or four yards from mc : the back fin appeared about ten or twelve feet high, 

 and had either before or behind it (I cannot now recollect which) a round M'hite 

 spot on the back ; all the rest of the body that show ed was black like a porpoise. 

 I did not see the head or tail, nor more than a portion of the back ; they went 

 steadily, not rolling like a porpoise.' 



There certainly is no proof here that the species noticed was a rin/seter, but 

 that it was what has been called the High-finned Cachalot does not in my 

 opinion admit of doubt. In Templeton's Catalogue of the Vertebrate Animals 



