1891-92.] Prof. Sir Wm. Turner on the Lesser Borqiial. 
37 
at Burntisland in June 1761, and that which Mr Patrick Neill 
saw stranded at Alloa in 1808,* which was 43 feet long, were also 
in all likelihood immature examples of B. musculas. 
Dr Scoresby, in his famous work On the Arctic Regions,^ 
described a whalebone whale 17|- feet long, killed in Scalpa Bay, 
Orkney, in November 1808, which there can be little doubt was 
Balcenoptera rostrata. A Pinner whale 14 feet long, caught in the 
stake-nets near Largo, Pirth of Perth, :i: in May 1832, was in all 
probability another example. But the specimen which one can cite 
as the first definitely determined Scottish example was a young 
female captured in Pebruary 1834 in the stake-nets at Queensferry. 
It was 9 ft. 11 inches long, and was anatomised by Dr Knox and 
Mr Prederick Knox.§ When their museum was dispersed, the 
skeleton was procured for the Anatomical Museum of the University 
of Edinburgh. Dr Knox referred the animal to the species rostrata 
of Pabricius, though, in the printed catalogue of his museum, it is 
named Balcena minimus horealis. This specimen was contrasted 
by Knox with the Great Eorqual, taken at North Berwick in 1831, 
also in his collection, which was called by Knox Balcena maxima 
horealis, and the skeleton of which is now suspended in the Museum 
of Science and Art, Edinburgh. A number of years ago I identified 
this skeleton, which it had been customary to regard as Balcenoptera 
musculus, as B. sihhaldii. Prom the difference in the number of 
ribs and dorsal vertebrae in the Lesser as compared with the Greater 
Eorqual, Knox showed conclusively that the former could not 
possibly be the young of the latter, but must be a distinct species. 
In September 1857, a male, 14 ft. 5 inches long, was found near 
the Bell Eock and taken into Leith. Its characters were described 
by Dr James M‘Bain.|| Mr E. E. Alston refers (Scottish 
Mammalia, p. 18) to one caught in 1858 in the Pirth of Porth. 
* Memoirs of Wernerian Soc., vol. i. p. 201. 
t Vol. i. p. 485, Edinburgh, 1820. Scoresby figured this specimen from a 
drawing by Jas. Watson, Esq., in the possession of Dr Traill. 
t Edinburgh Advertiser, May 22, 1832. Loudon’s Magazine of Natural 
History, vol. v. p. 570, 1832. 
§ For references to this specimen, see Jardine’s Naturalist' s Library, volume 
on Whales, plate vii. ; F. Knox in Trans. New Zealand Inst., vol. 2, plate 2 a ; 
Knox’s Catalogue, of Anatomical Preparations of Whale; R. Knox in Proc. 
Linn. Soc., Oct. 1857, and Journal VInstitut, 1834. 
II Proc. Roy. Phys. Soc., 1858, vol. i. 
