NOTES AND QUERIES. 19 



moor on the slopes of Cader Idris, where it had lived for some years and 

 caused much damage. — J. H. Salter (University College, Aberystwyth). 



Albino Weasel.— Referring to the enumeration of albino specimens of 

 the Common Weasel which have beeu hitherto recorded (Zool. 1894, 

 p. 449), I may mention that some time since Mr. J. Pettitt, taxidermist, of 

 Colchester, showed me a specimen which had been killed near that place 

 about Dec. 20th, 1892. It was pure white, with pink eyes, and the flesh 

 was of the usual pale colour. — Miller Christy (Pryors, Broomfield, near 

 Chelmsford). 



CETACEA. 



Hump-backed Whale on the Lincolnshire Coast. — The members 

 of the family Balanopterida, of which there are two well-marked genera, 

 comprising the thick-bodied, large-finned Humpbacks (Megaptera), and the 

 long, slender, small-finned Rorquals or Finner Whales (Balanoptera), are 

 distinguished by the longitudinal pleats or folds in the skin of the throat 

 and belly, and by the possession of a dorsal fin. The head is relatively 

 smaller than in the Right Whales, and the jaws are less arched ; the 

 baleen is short and twisted, the vertebrae of the neck are usually separate, 

 that is, notankylosed, and the flipper has only four fingers. The Rorquals, 

 or some of them, are not very uncommon off our northern coasts, but the 

 Hump-backed Whale {Megaptera longbnana) is of such rare occurrence that, 

 until the present year, four examples only have been recorded to have been 

 met with in British waters since 1829, when the first was cast ashore near 

 Newcastle-on-Tyne, in September of that year (Johnston, Trans. Newcastle 

 Nat. Hist. Soc. vol. i.). No other example was met with until 1863, 

 when a second was captured in the estuary of the Dee, and its skeleton 

 having been prepared, is preserved in the Liverpool Museum. Again 

 twenty years elapsed before a third was recognized, this time at the mouth 

 of the Tay, in the winter of 1883—84 (Struthers, Journ. Anat. & Phys., 

 1887 ; and Flower, ' Mammals, Living and Extinct,' 1891, p. 242). After 

 another interval of ten years, a fourth came ashore on the Enniscrone 

 Sands, Co. Sligo, on the 21st March, 1893 (Warren, Zool. 1893, p. 188). 

 We have now to chronicle the capture of a fifth example of this whale, 

 which was stranded at Chapel, on the coast of Lincolnshire, about seven miles 

 north of Skegness, during the first week of September last. Its identity was 

 established by Mr. G. H. Caton Haigh, who on hearing of its capture went 

 to see it, and found it in process of beiug cut up. He reported it to be a small 

 specimen of its kind, about twenty-five feet in length, with a flipper seven 

 or eight feet long and perfectly white; the rest of the body black, 

 excepting a few white marks on the under side. Mr. Cordeaux, who 

 reported the occurrence (' Naturalist,' 1894, p. 286), has referred to only 

 three previous instances of its capture in the British Islands, and has 



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