SEALS AND WHALES OF THE L.M.B.C. DISTRICT, 269 
same locality for three weeks after his capture, and was 
driven by three fishing boats upon the same bank, which, 
however, was covered with sufficient water to enable him 
to flounder off.” 
On the first of September, 1881, two fishermen named 
William Dunbobin and Adam Ireland, while fishing in the 
Lancashire side of the Mersey, near Speke, observed 
something unusual lying on the beach. On getting to the 
place they found that a whale had been left by the 
receding tide. ‘They at once set about capturing the 
beast, which they succeeded in doing after a smart 
strugele. I visited it as soon as possible afterwards and 
found it to be a fine specimen of the Beaked Whale, 
Hyperoodon rostratus, measuring twenty-three feet in 
length and twelve feet in greatest girth. The skeleton 
was obtained for the Museum, but owing to unavoidable 
difficulties was not succesfully macerated. 
It is somewhat singular that this specimen was captured 
near the spot where the Whale, said to have been twenty- 
four feet long, was caught (in October, 1856), whose 
skeleton was mounted for the Museum of the Liverpool 
Royal Institution. That skeleton was sold with the rest 
of the Mammalia collection, and other objects, to the 
authorities of the Nottingham Museum, to which they 
were removed a few years since. Fortunately before the 
removal I was favoured by the Committee of the Institution 
with the loan of the skull, from which a large series of well 
executed pencil drawings was made by Mr. John Chard, 
Museum Draughtsman, under my personal supervision. 
Family 3. DELPHINIDA. 
Phocena communis, F. Cuvier. 
The Common Porpoise is frequent in shoals during 
stormy and changeable weather. A very young Porpoise, 
