THE MAMMALIAN FAUNA OF CHESHIRE. 247 



having winges, legges, and budds of feathers, hanging onely by 

 the bill, of these I haue seene manye, and as the people report 

 and verielie are perswaded, these be the Barnacles, for other 

 breedinge there is not found of them.* 



THE MAMMALIAN FAUNA OF CHESHIRE. 

 By T. A. Coward and Charles Oldham. 

 (Concluded from p. 221.) 

 Order Cetacea.— Fam. Bal^enid^e. 

 Megaptera boops, Fab.; Hump-backed Whale. — A young 

 female, 31 feet in length, was stranded on a sandbank in the 

 Mersey estuary, near Speke, on July 17th, 1863. It was 

 examined in the flesh by T. J. Moore, whose account of its 

 capture ('Naturalists' Scrap-book,' p. 103) was quoted in 'The 

 Zoologist' for 1863, p. 8801. The skeleton is now in the 

 Brown Museum, Liverpool. Dr. J. E. Gray's erroneous state- 

 ment that this specimen was captured in the Dee estuary (Proc. 

 Zool. Soc. 1864, p. 211) has been repeated in the second edition 

 of Bell's ■ British Quadrupeds,' and elsewhere. 



Family Physeterid^e. 

 Hyperoodon rostratus (Chemnitz) ; Common Beaked Whale ; 

 Bottle-nosed Whale. — This species has occurred on the coast 

 more frequently than any of the other large cetaceans; and, 

 unless there has been some confusion and error with regard to 

 dates and localities, there are no less than nine distinct records. 

 An example, 24 feet in length and 12 feet in girth, was taken in 

 October, 1785, "in the recess of the river Dee below Chester" 

 (Pennant, quoted by C. Collingwood, " Historical Fauna of Lan- 

 cashire and Cheshire," Proc. Liv. Lit. and Phil. Soc, vol. xviii. 

 1863-4, p. 163). One taken at the mouth of the Mersey at the 

 end of April, 1829. The skeleton was preserved in the Museum 

 of the Royal Institution, Liverpool ('Loudon's Magazine/ vol. ii. 

 p. 391). One, 24 ft. in length and 13 ft. in girth, captured on the 

 East Hoyle Bank at the end of September, 1839 (Wm. Thompson, 



* The old fable that the Bernicle Goose was produced from old ships 

 rotting in the ocean was refuted by Eay and Willughby in 1676 (Harris's 

 ' Travels,' ed, 1764, ii. 669). 



