THE RIGHT WHALE OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC. 891 
biscayensis. A drawing of the whale which had been made by Dr MonoprErRo was 
reproduced by vAN BENEDEN,* whilst measurements were recorded by Fiscusr, the 
author of instructive memoirs on the Cetacea of the south-west of France. t 
In February 1877 an important capture of a female Right Whale took place in the 
Gulf of Taranto, South Italy. Professor CapeuLtni examined it, and published a 
description { with a coloured drawing by Huxssr of the animal, and also figured some of 
the bones. He gave it the name Balena tarentina, and regarded it as closely resem- 
bling B. australis. In the following year Gasco published a more detailed account of 
this specimen,§ which he named B. biscayensis. He reproduced a coloured drawing by 
MarRULLIER, and, as the skeleton had been acquired by the Museum in Naples, he was 
able to figure many of the bones. In 1889 Professor DE LA Paz GRAELLS 
account of the whales which frequent the coasts of Spain, and noted the skeletons in 
some of the provincial museums. He saw in the Institute of Secondary Instruction, San 
Sebastian, the skeleton of a B. biscayensis which had been taken apparently in 
February 1878 near Guetaria, in the Bay of Biscay. He figured the skeleton and 
some of the individual bones. He also referred to the skeleton of another specimen 
in the Museum, Santiago, caught about 1880 off the coast of Galicia.4 
In 1891 Professor Poucunt, from a comparison of two photographs, one of which 
was that of a Right Whale taken at Algiers in 1886,** a part of the skeleton of which 
is in the Museum of Natural History, Paris, whilst the other was a photograph 
of a whale caught off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, concluded that they were of the 
same species, b. biscayensis. The specimen from Algiers supplied a second example 
gave an 
of the capture of this whale in the Mediterranean. 
In 1893 Professor GULDBERG stated {+ that from 1889 to 1891 Norwegian captains 
had caught Right Whales, which were Nordcapers, off the coast of Iceland. In 1889 he 
received at the Museum in Christiania a skull, and in 1891 a skeleton, and specimens 
had also been presented to Copenhagen and Bergen. It is obvious, therefore, that 
Balena biscayensis had not been exterminated, and that isolated examples had been 
caught during the nineteenth century in seas as remote from each other as those 
of Iceland and the Gulf of Taranto in South Italy. 
We may now inquire into the occurrence of the Nordcaper in Scottish waters. 
Some years ago the late Mr THomas SovuTHwELt called attention to this matter.{{ 
* Ostéographie des Cétacés, by VAN BENEDEN and GERVAIS, plate vii. 
+ Ann. des Sciences nat., vol. xv., 1871 ; Actes de la Soc. Linnéenne de Bordeaua, vol. xxxv., 1881. 
t Mem. dell’ Accad. delle Scien. du Bologna, vol. vii., 1877. 
§ Atti della R. Accad. delle Scien., Napoli, vol. vii. 1878. 
|| Mem. de la R. Acad. des Ciencias, Madrid, vol. xiii., 1889. 
“| In the course of his inquiry, Signor GRAELLS made the interesting observation that the shields of fie munici- 
palities of the coast towns, Bermeo, Lequeitio, Castrourdiale, Ondarroa and Plencia in Viscayo, sho~.ed their early 
association with the whale fishery, as Basque fishermen giving chase to whales with boats and harpoc ; are represented. 
** Comptes rendus de la Soc. de Biologie, Paris, 1891. 
tt “Zur Kenntniss des Nordkapers,” Zool. Jahrbuch, vii.; also in Biol. Centralblatt, Leipzig, xxiii., 1903. 
tt Proc. Nat, Hist. Soc., Glasgow, 1881; also in his work on Seals and Whales, 1881, ard in Ann. Sect. Nat, Hist, 
January 1907. 
