192 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



NOTES AND QUERIES 



CETACEA. 



Bottle-nosed Dolphin in the Thames. — I have now no doubt that 

 you are quite correct in your surmise (p. 143) that the Dolphin caught here 

 some days ago is the species known as the Bottle-nosed Dolphin, Delphinus 

 tursio. The very pale colour of the under parts led me to suppose it was 

 D. delphis. However, the shape of the beak (the lower jaw being curved 

 and longer than the upper jaw), the comparatively few teeth, as well as the 

 large size of the animal, point, I think, unmistakably to Delphinus tursio. 

 A second Dolphin was found dead on the shore at Isleworth on the 20th 

 inst. This also is D. tursio, but a smaller specimen. It is a male, of a uni- 

 form dark grey, and measures 9 J ft. in length by 5£ ft. in girth. I counted 

 22 teeth on each side of each jaw (f f-ff ) ; they were all, I think, pointed, 

 not truncated like the back teeth of the Chiswick specimen. It would be 

 interesting to discover what induced these large marine Cetacea to make 

 their way through the traffic-laden waters of the Thames to London. — 

 Alfked Sich (Burlington Lane, Chiswick). 



[Another correspondent, Mr. Walter Crouch, of Wanstead, who examined 

 the specimen, has kindly furnished some further particulars. He states 

 that the teeth in both the upper and lower jaws were much worn down, 

 indicating that the animal was of mature age. A photograph forwarded by 

 Mr. Sich enables us to correct certain faults in the figure given by Bell in 

 his standard work on British Quadrupeds, and furnishes a reliable outline 

 for any future illustration that may be required. — Ed.] 



BIRDS. 

 Sale of Great Auk's Egg. — On April 20th last a crowd of naturalists 

 flocked to King Street, Covent Garden, for a sale by auction of a Great 

 Auk's egg, which belonged to the late Mr. J. H. Tuke, of Hitchin, Hert- 

 fordshire, and was disposed of by order of his executors. This egg is believed 

 to be of Icelandic origin, and in 1841 was in possession of Friedrich Schulz, 

 of Dresden, who in May of that year sold it to an English dealer, Hugh 

 Reid, of Doncaster, for £2 6s., as Reid himself informed the late Robert 

 Champley, of Scarborough (cf. Grieve 's ' History of the Great Auk.' 1885, 

 Appendix, p. 28). From Reid it passed into the possession of the late 

 Mr. Tuke, and it is now the property of Mr. Noble, of Henley-on-Thames, 

 to whom it was knocked down at the recent sale by the auctioneer, Mr. J. 

 C. Stevens, for the sum of 160 guineas. 



Greater Nightingale in Kent.— In the last two lines of his article on 

 the Nightingale, in the fourth edition of * British Birds,' Prof. Newton has 

 remarked, " there is no sufficient reason for supposing that the larger 



