BRITISH MAMMALS 
back-bone, and eleven foot between the eyes. . . . The oil being boyled 
out of his head was Tarmacittee." 
The first recorded Scottish example was taken at Limekilns, Firth of 
Forth, in 1689. 
Most of the captures of Sperm Whales on our side of the Atlantic 
have occurred in recent years about St. Kilda and Rockall, where, according 
to Professor D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson [Scottish Naturalist, Oct. 
1918, p. 222), forty-two were taken during the years 1908-1914, all being 
males except one. 
Thomas Beale, in his work on the Natural History of the Sperm Whale, 
as quoted by Millais, describes it as " moving through the water with the 
greatest ease, and with considerable velocity. When undisturbed, he passes 
tranquilly along just below the surface of the water at the rate of about 
three or four miles an hour, which motion he effects by a gentle oblique 
motion from side to side of the flukes, precisely in the same manner as 
a boat is sculled by means of an oar over the stern. When proceeding 
at this, his common rate, his body lies horizontally, his hump projecting 
above the surface, with the water a little disturbed around it, and more 
or less so according to his velocity ; this disturbed water is called by 
whalers ' white water,' and from the greater or less quantity of it an 
experienced whaler can judge very accurately of the rate at which a whale 
is going from a distance of even four or five miles. 
" In this mode of swimming the whale is able to attain a velocity of 
about seven miles an hour, but when desirous of proceeding at a greater rate 
the action of the tail is materially altered ; instead of being moved laterally 
and obliquely, it strikes the water with the broad flat surface of the flukes 
in a direct manner, upwards and downwards ; and each time the blow 
is made with the inferior surface, the head of the whale sinks down to 
the depth of eight or ten feet, but when the blow is reversed it rises out 
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