so SEALS AND WHALES OF THE BRLTLSH SEAS. 



Whale taken off Yarmouth in 17S4 ; I have no notes as to the source from 

 which I derived the statement, but probably it was from some MS. of Mr. 

 Dawson Turner's. It is not likely that any bones of the Whale were kept 

 in Yarmouth, for there was no naturalist there at the time, and the whaling- 

 trade, which was then actively carried on from the port, must have made 

 Whales' bones very common." This is all that is ever likely to be learned of 

 the Yarmouth Right-whale ; but the season at which it occurred would render 

 the heated seas on our coast utterly unbearable to an ice-loving inhabitant 

 of the Arctic seas. This, with its small size, would seem to point to a 

 closely-allied species to be mentioned soon. Sibbald records the occurrence 

 of what he considers was probably a Right-whale, at Peterhead, in 1682 ; and 

 a Whale recorded at Tynemouth by Willughby may have been of this 

 species. In the first edition of Bell's 'Quadrupeds' is a communication from 

 the Rev. Mr. Barclay to the effect that on the coast of Zetland dead or very 

 lean Whales of this species have several times been found or have run 

 aground ; but in the second edition of the same work the authors state that 

 " there is no proof these references do not apply to some other species." The 

 same may be said with reference to Low's remarks in the ' Fauna Orcadensis,' 

 p. 158. This is all we know of the supposed occurrence of Right-Whales in 

 British waters in recent times, and there is little doubt that these, if Right- 

 Whales at all, should be referred to the next species. 



The extreme northern habitat assigned to this species by those who have 

 devoted much time and labour to the investigation of the subject, clearly 

 proves that it must either have changed its habitat, which its present habits 

 seem to render improbable, or that some other species formerly inhabited the 

 temperate seas outside the Arctic circle extending southward to the Atlantic 

 as far as latitude 40 ', for it is beyond doubt that a brisk whale-fishery was 

 carried on in former times by the I^asque population in the Bay of Biscay 

 and adjacent seas as far back as the Sth or loth century. That such a 



