148 TEANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



Dock, originally the " Tees,"* a government guardship. 

 On the 7th of June, 1871, she sank from decay, and there 

 has been no such floating church since, the " William " 

 having perished in 1851. 



In Greenland Street there was a boiling house, and 

 both that and Baffin Street were named during the period 

 referred to. It does not seem to have been necessary to 

 bring home the large bones of the whale with the blubber, 

 but that they were imported is certain. They were 

 probably brought home as curiosities and disposed of to 

 people who had a fancy for such objects, only the largest 

 possessing much interest, and this is the only explanation 

 of so many having been found buried in the soil and clay 

 in so many different places. The retired whaling captain 

 would delight in having the lower jaw-bones of a whale 

 forming the entrance to his garden, and other people seem 

 to have obtained and ornamented their grounds with them 

 in a similar fashion. The vertebrae and the larger bones 

 of the fore-limbs or flippers were placed in gardens as 

 curiosities from the sea, and the jaw-bones were placed 

 on end and formed a sort of Gothic archway. The latter 

 were evidently sometimes used instead of timber in the 

 construction of rough erections, such as the cart shed in 

 a farm yard in Barlow Lane off Walton road, a represen- 

 tation of which is given in Herdman's "Pictorial Eelics of 

 Ancient Liverpool," as the "Whale-bone shed," PI. LIIL 

 (3). It was formed of four lower jaw-bones placed one 

 behind another and with the intervening spaces filled in 

 with wooden planks. The drawing shows that the two ends 

 of the jaw-bones were fastened together at the top, and the 

 distance between the basal ends could be regulated as 

 required, and consequently gave no measure of the original 

 width of the mouth of the whale. 



* "Ancient Liverpool." 



