GJ 
it contains. This species i3 said to be widely spread throughout 
Europe, from the Apennines northward to the Arctic circle j Lord 
Clermont gives England, France, Belgium, greater part of Germany, 
Hungary, Denmark, Croatia, and Southern Russia to the Ural mount- 
ains, as well as Moldavia, as its habitation. In this country it appears 
to be generally distributed, according to Bell, though local, extending 
to the extreme North of Scotland. Mr. Yarrell’s specimen was taken 
in Essex, and we now add Norfolk as a known locality. We have 
in our Museum part of a jaw and some teeth from the forest-bed 
which are referred to by Messrs. Blackmore and Alston to this species 
(“Proceedings of the Zoological Society, 1874,” p. 461). Its fossil 
remains have also been found in several other localities, as Kent’s 
Hole, Hutton Cave, Woolley Hole, &c. 
Of its habits I can say nothing from personal observation. Bell 
says, they are much the same as the common Field Vole, but that 
it is bolder and more partial to animal food ; in confinement it 
prefers fruits to herbage, a gooseberry being a favourite delicacy. 
In Morayshire, Mr. Gordon has known them v$ry destructive to 
young larch by eating the buds and barking the stems in winter. 
They have been known to plunder the nests of Hedge-sparrows and 
Robins of their young ones, and to kill and devour a common 
Shrew. 
Common Rorqual ( Buhenoptera musculus. Lin.). On the 1st of 
March, a fine full-grown female of this species was washed on shore 
at Happisburgh, on the Norfolk coast. I first saw it on the 2nd, 
but owing to the rough surf that was breaking upon the beach, and 
the unfavourable position in which it lay, any close examination 
was impossible. The head was reversed and partially buried in 
the sand, so that the blow-holes were not to be seen, the body was 
then skewed over nearly on its side, the tail portion again having 
the underpart uppermost ; in this position, (the belly being towards 
me and very much distended, the surf not allowing me to go to the 
other side), I was unable to see either the dorsal fin or flippers, and 
upon a subsequent occasion, as will be seen, I was equally unfortunate. 
At a little distance the baleen was just visible in the partially open 
mouth, but I could not get near enough, for the reason already 
stated, to examine it. By dodging the breakers T managed to 
obtain a rough measurement of the total length, but from the posi- 
