228 
VII. 
ON THE OCCUERENCE OF BALJENA BI8GAYENSIS, 
THE ATLANTIC EIGHT- WHALE, 
ON THE EAST COAST OF SCOTLAND. 
Br Thomas Southwell, E.Z.S. 
Read 22 ?id February, i88i. 
By far tlie most interesting fact wliicli Las come to my knowledge 
of late, with regard to British Mammalia, is the undoubted 
occurrence in the year 180G of an old female of the above species, 
accompanied by its young one, at Peterhead. I am indebted for 
the particulars of this event to Captain David Gray, the 
experienced commander of the whaler ‘Eclipse.’ 
Several instances (none very recent) of the supposed occurrence 
of Greenland Eight-whales in British waters are to bo found 
recorded ; these records, however, are neither very precise nor 
authentic. Our knowledge of the habits and distribution of this 
species was much less accurate at that time than at present, and, 
as a better acquaintance with the subject revealed the extreme 
improbability of the Greenland Eight-whale (B. viysticetusj — the 
only northern species of Eight-whale then known — ever straying to 
our latitude, the opinion gained ground that some other species of 
Whalebone W^halo had been mistaken for the true Balmna. In 
18G1, Professors Eschricht and Eeinhardt, of Copenhagen, published 
their elaborate researches on the subject,* and clearly established the 
existence of tw'o distinct northern species of Eight-whale, one of 
■which “ belonged to the waters of the temperate Northern Atlantic 
as exclusively as the Greenland Whale belonged to the icy 
Polar Sea,” thus throwing a flood of light on the hitherto 
obscure species, formerly abounding as far south as the Bay of 
Biscay; and it is now generally believed that those individuals 
* “ Om Nordhvalen,” -which appeared in the ‘ Transactions of the Royal 
Danish Society of Sciences a translation, edited by Professor Flower, 
was j)ublished by the Ray Society in 1866. 
