892 PRINCIPAL SIR WILLIAM TURNER ON 
He stated that in 1806 an old Right Whale, with its sucker which was killed, came 
into Peterhead Bay ; also that in 1872 Captain Davin Gray saw one sporting off the 
Headland of that bay. They were at the time believed to be Greenland Right Whales 
which had wandered south, but our present knowledge that this animal does not leave 
the icy north justifies the inference that they were specimens of Balena biscayensis. 
The recent establishment by the Norwegians of fishing stations in Shetland, Harris in 
the Hebrides, and on the west of Ireland has thrown much additional light on the species 
of large whales which frequent the seas to the north and west of Scotland. In addition 
to the Great Fin Whales, Balenoptera musculus, B. borealis, B. sibbaldi, several 
specimens of the Sperm Whale, the Humpback (Megaptera boops), and Balena 
biscayensis have been taken. Mr SourHweE.u recorded the capture of a Nordcaper * 
in July 1903 in lat. 61° N., about 50 miles west of Shetland. Mr R. C. Hatpang ft 
recorded six specimens of the same species, four bulls and two cows, as having been 
brought to the whaling station at Buneveneader, Harris, in 1906. The same naturalist 
further reported that in the years 1907 to 1909 sixty-eight examples of B. biscayensis, 
thirty-four bulls and thirty-four cows, many of the latter of which were with young, were 
taken, and of these sixty-six were at the Harris Station, and two, a bull and a cow, at 
the Alexandra Station in Shetland. Mr D. G. Litiix has recorded{ the capture in 
1908 of four bulls and a cow from the fishing station at Inishkea, in the west of Ireland, 
but no specimen of this whale was taken at the Bellmullet Station in 1911.§ Professor 
R. Cottetr has summarised || the takes of this whale by the Norwegians from April 
1889 to 1908 as about eighty animals, the sexes being in almost equal numbers. As 
the fishing was conducted around Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and to the west of the 
Hebrides, his statistics include the specimens referred to in Mr Haupane’s narrative 
to the same date. Coxuerr‘l reproduced four figures to show the external characters 
of this whale.** 
Buneveneader, on West Loch Tarbet, is favourably situated as a station to which 
whales may be taken when captured during their migration northwards in the early 
summer. As regards the Nordcaper, the course which it usually makes is west of the 
Flannan Islands and St Kilda on the way to Iceland. Mr HaciE CLarxg, the energetic 
Keeper of the Natural History Department of the Royal Scottish Museum, came into 
communication with Mr Cari F. Heruorson, the Manager of the Company at this 
station, and found him most willing to assist the Museum in adding to its collection 
specimens of the larger Cetacea frequenting the North Atlantic. Mr Heruorson pre- 
sented to the Museum in 1911 a splendid skull of an old male Sperm Whale, and 
subsequently one of Megaptera boops. In the summer of 1912 the almost complete 
skeletor of Balena biscayensis arrived, which, by the permission of the authorities of 
* Ann. and vy. Nat. Hist., vol. xvi., 1905. + “Whaling in Scotland,” Ann. Scot. Nat. Hist., January 1907. 
t Proc. Zool. Soc,, London, October 1910. § Report, British Assoc. Ad. Sc., Dundee, 1912. 
\| Proc. Zool. Soc., Loudon, vol. i., 1909. “1 Proc. Roy. Soc., London, 1909. 
** F, Freunp described, Deutsche Arbeit, xi. p. 417, 1911-12, the use of the harpoon gun in the whale fishery off 
the Faroe Islands. B. biscay/ensis was seldom seen, 
