268 Lloyd's natural history. 



was stranded in the River Crouch, Essex, on February i2th, 

 1891. 



Habits. — There is nothing specially noteworthy in the habits 

 of this species, except that it feeds largely on fish, herrings 

 being an especially favourite food. 



III. RUDOLPHI's rorqual. BALiENOPTERA BOREALIS. 



Balanoptera borealis. Lesson, Hist. Nat. Cdtacds, p. 342 (1828); 



Flower, List Cetacea Brit. Mus. p. 6 (1885). 

 Balanoptera laikeps. Gray, Zool. Voy. Erebus and Terror, p. 20 



(1846); Bell, British Quadrupeds, 2nd ed. p. 407 (1874); 



Southwell, British Seals and Whales, p. 77 (1881). 

 Characters. — Size medium ; flippers very short, measuring 

 only one-eleventh of the total length of the head and body ; 

 general colour of the upper-parts bluish-black, with oblong 

 light-coloured spots ; under-parts more or less white ; tail, 

 flippers, and whale-bone black, but the curling bristly ex- 

 tremities of the latter white. Total length about 50 feet, or 

 rather less. 



Distribution. — In the Atlantic, Rudolphi's Rorqual is a more 

 northern species than either of the preceding, being very 

 abundant in summer in the neighbourhood of the North Cape, 

 where at that season it is a regular visitant, and apparently not 

 known to range further south than the coast of Biarritz. 



It will be found stated in the second edition of Bell's 

 " British Quadrupeds " that a Whale stranded at Charmouth, 

 Dorsetshire, in February 1840, not improbably pertained to 

 this species ; but Sir William Turner (" Journ. Anatomy and 

 Physiology," 1892, p. 473) is of opinion that it was more pro- 

 bably an example of the Common Rorqual. A Rorqual 

 stranded in the Isle of Islay in 1866, the skull and some other 



