RIGHT WHALES. 26 1 



names, it appears that the Right Whales of the North Atlantic 

 the North Pacific, the South Atlantic, and the South Pacific, 

 cannot be satisfactorily distinguished from one another, and they 

 are accordingly included provisionally under one name. Such 

 specimens as have been observed in the British seas belong to 

 the North Atlantic variety, B. biscayensis. Formerly common in 

 the North Atlantic, this Whale has long since been practically 

 exterminated in these seas, such stragglers as have reached the 

 European coasts during the last century or so having probably 

 travelled from the opposite side of the Atlantic. 



Such few examples of Right Whales as are stated to have 

 visited our coasts in the older works on British Mammals were 

 believed to belong to the Greenland Whale ; but it is now 

 pretty certainly ascertained that that species never by any 

 chance wanders so far south, and they must accordingly be 

 referred, in all probability, to the Southern Right Whale. 



The earliest record we have of the reported occurrence of 

 Right Wales in British waters is one given by Sibbald, who 

 states that in the year 1682 one visited Peterhead ; and there 

 is some evidence that a young specimen was stranded at 

 Yarmouth, in the summer of 1846. At an earlier date than 

 the latter, namely in the year 1806, a female Right Whale with 

 her calf, was seen off the coast of Peterhead ; the young one 

 being killed by fishermen who started in pursuit. The only 

 other instance is given on the evidence of Captain Gray, an 

 experienced whaler, who, while walking at Peterhead in the 

 autumn of 1872, saw what he believed to be a Right Whale 

 within half a mile of the shore. It may be added that the 

 united cervical vertebrae of a Right Whale dredged off Lyme 

 Regis not later than the year 1853, belong to the present 

 species. 



Since this Whale has so little claim to be regarded as 

 British, it will be unnecessary to say anything concerning its 



