34$ Tfife ZOOLOGIST. 



to identify the species, and found it to be a male " Bottle-nose," Hyperoodon 

 rostratus, 25 ft. in length. The spot where it was found and killed was 

 about half a mile eastward of the entrance to Barking Creek, on the 

 foreshore of Eastbury Level, and close to the Lower Powder Magazine. 

 The Whale was partly floating on a high tide, secured to a barge, and 

 lying on its right side. A portion of the skin was torn off, and it had 

 evidently been roughly treated and chafed by the ropes. Later on I took 

 train to Leigh, to see another Whale which had been towed there after 

 capture near the Nore Lightship. This also is a male of the same species, 

 and of exactly the same length, but in much better condition. This speci- 

 men was lying on the left side, high and dry in Tomlin's yard, and measure- 

 ments and drawings of it have been made by my friend Dr. Murie, a well- 

 known cetologist, who has published many valuable memoirs on the 

 Cetacea, and who now resides at Leigh. The specimen at Tripcock, or 

 Barking Reach, has been measured and sketched by myself, and a record 

 of these two Whales, which probably travelled together from the Arctic 

 Seas, will in due time be published in the ' Essex Naturalist.' These 

 animals abound during the summer in the Northern Seas, between Labra- 

 dor and Nova Zembla ; and during the past ten years an extensive pursuit 

 of them has been carried on near Jan Mayen and Iceland, from May to 

 July. In the autumn and winter they come southward into the North 

 Atlantic waters, and are occasionally stranded on the British coast, especially 

 in Scotland. They usually occur either singly or in pairs. Two were 

 taken (an old and a } T oung female) near Hunstanton, Norfolk, on 28th 

 August, 1888, and a few have been recorded on the Essex coast. One o^ 

 these, taken at Maldon in 1717, is figured in Dale's ' History of Harwich ' 

 (1730). One, 21 ft. in length, was captured in the Thames in 1783, and 

 auother on the coast of Essex in 1817. This species belongs to the suborder 

 Odontoceti, or toothed Whales, of which the Sperm Whale is the largest, 

 and comes next to that in size, adults measuring from 25 to 30 ft. in length. 

 Like the Sperm, they have a store of oil in the head, from which spermaceti 

 is refined, aud the blubber-oil is considered superior as a lubricant to that 

 of the Sperm Whale. The latter has from 40 to 50 large teeth in the 

 lower jaw, whereas the Bottle-nose has only two, and these are functionless, 

 never rising above the gums. Their food principally consists of the soft- 

 bodied cephalopods, such as squids and cuttles. The distinguishing 

 features of this Whale are the bony maxillary crests, which, in the adult 

 form, rise on each side from the upper jaw, causing to a large extent the 

 great swelling up of the head, from which the common name of the animal 

 is derived. In very aged specimens these crests become of great height 

 and thickness, and the separate bones become ankylosed together. — Walter 

 Cuouch (Grafton House, Wansteadj. 



