Quadrupeds, tyc. 5095 



' Letter from Dr. Kinaban, dated Callao, August, 1855.' 



1 Occurrence of Rare Birds in Ireland.' By Dr. Burkitt. 



1 On the Veddahs of Ceylon.' By Dr. Lamprey. 



' Celtic Names of the Water-Newt.' By T. O'Mahony, Esq., A.B., 

 Treasurer Dublin University Zoological Association. 



' Extracts from my Diary.' By Capt. M'CHntock, R.N. 



* Report of the Council of the Dublin Natural History Society, 

 1855.' 



Notices of the Serials of Germany, France, and Britain. 



Piscivorous Propensity of the Water Campagnol. — Under this heading I see 

 it stated that the water vole has been observed to feed on fish. Might it not have 

 been a common gray rat, which was mistaken for a vole ? The common rat is 

 as numerous in the streams in this neighbourhood as the true water rat, for which it 

 is often mistaken, swimming and diving equally well with that animal. — W. S. M. 

 D' Urban; Newport, near Exeter, February 5, 1856. 



Occurrence of the Round-headed Porpoise (Delphinus melas) at Oldcambus. — On 

 Saturday, March 29th, 1856, a large marine animal came ashore among the rocks of 

 Greenheugh, a short way to the west of St. Helen's church. This was ascertained to 

 be a round-headed porpoise or ca'ing whale. The species frequents in great droves 

 the coasts of Shetland and other northern islands ; and as the blubber is highly valued, 

 the animal is the source of much profit, as well as sport to the inhabitants, who with 

 their boats environ those bodies of them that are so luckless as to venture wilhin the 

 deep landlocked bays, and then pursue them till they run aground. It is, however, 

 extremely rare on the Berwickshire coast, there being no previously recorded instance 

 of its appearance here ; but a shoal of the same sort of miniature whale, in various 

 stages of growth, was stranded on the 19th of March, 1854, at Howick Burn Foot, in 

 Northumberland. The dimensions of the present individual (which was a male) were 

 greater than any of those observed on that occasion. Its length was 20 feet, and its 

 greatest girth 11 feet. The head was elevated in front, short and rounded, with a 

 deepish transverse depression above the thick upper lip. The mouth was small, the 

 opening being only 15 inches in length. It was armed with twenty-two sharp recurved 

 conical teeth in each jaw, none of them exceeding three-fourths of an inch in length. 

 The crescent-shaped blow-hole was seated in a cavity on the summit of the head, and 

 was distant 22 inches from the top of the snout, or 2 feet 10 inches from the tip of the 

 upper lip. The eyes were If inch in diameter, and were 1 foot 9 inches from the 

 mouth. The two paddle-fins were long, narrow and tapering; in length 4 feet 

 11 inches; in breadth, at the root, 1 foot 2 inches; and their distance from the snout 

 2 feet 11 inches. The single subtriangular back fin was blunt at the apex, the hinder 

 edge sinuated, projecting considerably near the middle: it was 3 feet 9 inches long 

 and 17 inches high, and it was situated 5 feet 8 inches from the snout. The horizon- 

 tally flattened tail was of a triangular form, and was divided by a blunt notch into 



