3456 Fishes. 



lity be assigned as the reason why attempts to plant and rear the oys- 

 ter on our coast have failed ; yet they no doubt have been the cause 

 of landing on this coast most of the larger and rarer species of fish 

 here recorded. And it may not be considered foreign to this subject 

 to state that in all likelihood the same cause — a strong current from 

 the Pentland Firth setting in on the southern shore of the Moray Firth 

 — has brought hither the sheep's scabious (Jasione montana) and Eng- 

 lish stone-crop {Sedum Anglicum), plants peculiar to the west side of 

 the island ; and also the larger West Indian seed, the horse-eye bean 

 (Dolichos pruriens), which of course could find no fit soil or season 

 wherein to germinate, as the other more hardy plants have done. Tf to 

 these fishes and plants, there be added the instances on which Ceta- 

 cea have been stranded on the south side of the Firth, few localities 

 around the island will be found to have been more favoured than it by 

 such numbers of rare visitants. 



The bottle-head or two-toothed whale (Hyperoodon bidens), found 

 near Nairn by the late Laird of Brodie, and published by Sowerby, 

 was for a length of time the unique British specimen, and but few 

 have since been discovered, (Zool. 2320). As far back as the days of 

 Sibbald this locality for such objects was well known. He states that 

 one of the larger whales he describes was found at the Boyne, near 

 Banff, and another near Peterhead. A venerable and much respected 

 citizen of Elgin has communicated the following notice of a journey 

 he took, upwards of seventy years ago, to Covesea, where some large 

 species of whale was stranded. As its graphic terms and pithy style 

 illustrate in many points the days of other years, as well as state a 

 fact germane to the matter in hand, it is given without abridgment. 



" As you are desirous to have the particulars of one of my earliest 

 adventures, which filled me with no little alarm and astonishment at 

 the moment, I proceed to say that having made up a party of ' loons 3 

 like myself, about ten years old, we sallied forth one fine morning to 

 see the wonders of the deep, in the stranded whale (making then a 

 great noise in the country), lying on the sandy beach a little to the 

 eastward of the rock on which the present lighthouse for the Stotfield 

 Skerries stands. My mother, good woman, filled my pockets with 

 bread and cheese, and gave me a penny to pay for my passage in the 

 Salter-hill boat, from where the present brick and tile work is to the 

 opposite shore, a distance of about two miles. The boat was dry and 

 'gizzen' [leaky], and took in too many passengers, as well as too 

 much water at its open seams. This, with a considerable swell in the 

 loch from a gale of westerly wind, and the over-crowded state of the 



