308 MR. T. SOUTHWELL ON ANCIENT RECORDS OF CETACEANS. 
who says that on the 2nd of December in the year 1723, a school 
of seventeen Sperm Whales came ashore at the mouth of the Elbe, 
half of which were males and half females ; these were probably 
immature, for Beale the great authority on the life-history of this 
species expressly says that the schools consist first of females accom- 
panied by their young, and secondly of the young and half-grown 
males ; but that the large and full-grown males always go singly in 
search of food. 
A very remarkable incursion of a herd of Sperm Whales on the 
East and South Coast of England is referred to by Dr. J. E. Gray, 
in the B. M. Cat., Seals and Whales (Edit. 2, p. 203), he does not 
give the full particulars, and is misleading as to date, but states 
the source of his information to be a letter from Walberswick, on 
the Coast of Suffolk, dated 7th March, 1788, in the form of a 
newspaper cutting, inserted in Sir Joseph Banks’ copy of the 
Phil. Trans, (vol. lxxvii, pt. 2, p. 450), in the B. M. Library. 
Through the kindness of Dr. Laver -of Colchester, I have seen 
a transcript of this cutting, and as our own county participated in 
the visitation I give the paragraph in full. After stating that 
a Whale, species unrecorded, had for a week past frequented the 
bay off Walberswick, the writer goes on to say, “ The most extra- 
ordinary instance of that sort was in February, 1763, after a hard 
gale of wind, northerly; when no less than twelve Whales which 
undoubtedly came out of the northern ocean, were towed or driven 
on shore at the following places ; all of them dead, and in a high 
state of putrefaction excepting one. 
2 near Lynn in Norfolk. 
2 on the coast of Essex. 
2 at Birchington in the Isle of Thanet. The skeleton of one of 
these, about 58 feet long, a very great curiosity, has been 
many years exhibited at Kockstrow’s Museum, Fleet Street, 
Strand. 
2 at Broadstairs near the North Foreland. 
1 at Hope Point in the river Thames. This was the only one 
that was seen alive. He ran aground and smothered 
himself in the mud, and was afterwards made a show of in 
the Greenland Dock. 
1 at Deal. 
2 on the coast of Holland. 
“These were all of the spermaceti kind, and of the male gender. 
