A HISTORY OF DEVONSHIRE 



good authority on such matters assured me 

 that one day at the end of July he had a good 

 view of a beluga or white whale, Delphinap- 

 terus leucas, as it rose off the Bolt Head, close 

 to the steam tug Perseverance, in which vessel 

 he was a passenger.' Commenting on this 

 Mr. Thomas Southwell says that ' this essen- 

 tially arctic species has undoubtedly been 

 met with several times in Scotch waters, and 

 one so late as i8 June 1902 at the mouth 

 of the Tyne, and strangely enough consider- 

 ing its northern habitat generally in the sum- 

 mer months. But where the record is not 

 substantiated by the production of the speci- 

 men, I think such statements should be re- 

 ceived with caution, as several examples of pure 

 white porpoises have been met with which 

 might readily be mistaken for this species by 

 the casual observer.' 



42. Porpoise. Phocaena communis. Lesson. 

 Common on both north and south coasts. 



43. Pilot Whale or Black Fish. Globicephalus 



melas, Traill. 

 This species is also known as the pilot 

 whale and the black fish. Bellamy mentions 

 one captured off Plymouth in 1839.^ Another 

 was found in a dead or a dying state on a reef 

 of rocks called Hook Ebb, east of Sidmouth, 

 after a severe gale in February 1883.^ The 

 skin was preserved and it is now in the Exeter 

 Albert Museum. 



44. Grampus. Orca gladiator. Lac^pWe. 

 Often observed in the channel. 



45. Risso's Grampus. Grampus griseus, 



Cuvier. 

 On 28 February 1870 I was asked to go 

 to the Plymouth Railway Station to see a 

 large fish which had been taken in the 

 mackerel nets. Unfortunately the train 

 with the truck containing the animal was just 

 leaving, but I was enabled to see enough of 

 it to decide it was a cetacean and an uncom- 

 mon species. I wrote Dr. Gray by the 

 evening post telling him that a cetacean of a 

 rare species would be in the Columbia market 

 on the following morning, and asking him to 

 send some one from the museum to look after 



^ Natural History South Devon, p. 190. 

 * Zoolo^st, 1883, p. 173. 



it and ascertain the species. Although Dr. 

 Gray acknowledged the receipt of my letter 

 he did nothing more, and the carcase was 

 bought by an enterprising individual who, 

 fitting up a hand cart, enclosed it in it, and 

 exhibited it in the streets of London, loudly 

 proclaiming the capture of the sea-monster, ' a 

 cross between a shark and a whale.' For- 

 tunately the show was encountered by Mr. 

 Gerrard, who made a bargain with the owner 

 and secured it for the British Museum, where 

 it now is. It proved to be a Risso's grampus, 

 captured about 20 miles south-west of the 

 Eddystone. It was a female about 1 1 feet 

 long, and she weighed about 7 cwt.* In Feb- 

 ruary 1888 some fishermen captured in their 

 herring-nets about 8 miles south of the Eddy- 

 stone another specimen, also a female, in 

 beautiful condition. Its length was 9 feet, 

 the greatest girth 5 feet 2 inches. The 

 skeleton is in the museum of the Plymouth 

 Institution, and the skin in the Exeter Albert 

 Memorial Museum. A full account with an 

 engraving will be found in the Transactions of 

 the Plymouth Institution, ix. 314. 



46. Common Dolphin. Delphinus delphis, 



Linn. 

 Frequently visits our coasts. One killed 

 in Plymouth Sound 1883. 



47. Bottle-nosed Dolphin. Tursiops tursio, 



Fabricius. 



Bell — Delphinus tursio. 

 Montagu mentions one killed in Duncan- 

 non Pool, in the Dart river, 5 miles from its 

 mouth, and the specimen is described in 

 Werner ian Memoirs, iii. 75. The skull is in 

 the British Museum. Mr. Southwell says : 

 'The late John Gatcombe {Zoologist, 1884, 

 p. 65) describes two immature specimens of 

 D. tursio, each about 8 feet in length, which 

 he saw on 15 December 1883 at Hooe Lake 

 near Plymouth, where they had been cap- 

 tured on the mud banks in shallow water ; 

 he also mentions that the only other instance 

 which had come to his knowledge of the occur- 

 rence of this animal was an adult male 1 2 feet 

 long driven on shore under Plymouth Hoe a 

 few years previous.' 



* Trans. Dev. Assoc, xviii. 69 ; Trans. Plym. Inst. 

 iv. 154. 



340 



