404 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



search for it has been fruitless. It was decidedly smaller than a 

 Noctule, but it might have been a young specimen. I shall not over- 

 look another if I have the chance to examine one. — F. Coburn 

 (7, Holloway Head, Birmingham). 



CETACEA. 



Risso's Grampus in the Solway. — On the 24th Sept. last an 

 example of Eisso's Grampus (Grampus griseus) was taken by Mr. 

 Blake in the Solway, near Annan. This is only the second time that 

 this rare species has been captured in Scottish waters. The previous 

 occurrence was in September, 1889, when some fishermen chased a 

 herd of about ten off Hillswick, in Shetland, and ultimately drove 

 ashore and captured six of them. Sir Wm. Turner subsequently pro- 

 cured four of the crania and two whole carcases, and has since pub- 

 lished pretty full descriptions of their outward and inward anatomy in 

 the ' Proceedings of the Eoyal Physical Society ' and in the ' Journal of 

 Anatomy and Physiology.' In England, Kisso's Grampus has been 

 found in the following instances : — One was killed off Puckaster, Isle 

 of Wight, in February, 1843 ; an adult female 10J ft. long, taken in a 

 mackerel net near the Eddystone Lighthouse on 28th February, 1870 ; 

 a month later a young female was exposed in Billingsgate Market, 

 supposed to have been captured in the Channel ; a young male was 

 taken alive in the English Channel in July, 1875, near Chichester, and 

 was kept alive for a short time in the Brighton Aquarium ; a female on 

 February 3rd, 1886, was taken in a mackerel net about twenty miles 

 south of the Eddystone ; and lastly, on September 5th, 1887, one was 

 stranded in the estuary of the river Crouch in Essex, and would have 

 been entirely overlooked had not some of its bones fallen into the 

 hands of Dr. Laver, who submitted them to Professor Flower. Eisso's 

 Grampus was originally described by Cuvier, from a specimen obtained 

 at Brest in 1812. Four were stranded at Aiguillon, in La Vendue, in 

 1822. Large herds were seen in the Mediterranean Sea in 1829 and in 

 1854, and a specimen was taken at Nice in 1855. Sir William Turner 

 says, in his article in the ' Proceedings of the Eoyal Physical Society.' 

 that " a customary habitat of Eisso's Grampus would seem to be the 

 Mediterranean, in which sea it has been taken as far east as the 

 Adriatic, and as far south as the coast of Algiers and Morocco, whilst 

 Eisso stated that it frequented the northern shore about Nice at the 

 pairing season, and Paul Gervais has recorded the presence of a school 

 of these cetaceans in the mouths of the Ehone." Professor Beneden, 

 as quoted by Sir William Turner, gives it a much wider distribution, 

 for specimens, he says, have been captured at the Azores, the Cape of 

 Good Hope, Japan, the North American seaboard, and even New 



