56 
CETACEA. 
of Ireland, the Physeter Tursio is noticed, but merely in the following words : 
— £ Thrown ashore on the western coast occasionally.’ ” 
On the 1 5th Nov. 1846, Major Walker wrote me that “ the round white 
spot either before or behind the back fin and quite close to it was not an 
accidental mark, as it appeared in all — either five or seven — of them.” He 
remarks, “ The great height and narrowness of the back fin led me, on 
first perceiving it, to believe that it was a fishing cot with the black tarred 
sail made up to the mast.” * And in a subsequent letter the same gentle- 
man mentioned that he had met the captain of a Sunderland vessel to 
whom the high-finned cachalot was known, and who confirmed his recol- 
lection as to the narrowness and great height of the fin. 
The Common Whale, Balcena Mysticetus, Linn., 
Is said to have been taken on the coast on different occasions, but no 
description to enable a correct judgment to be arrived at respecting the 
species has come under my inspection. 
The simple fact of this and the Balcenoptera producing whalebone has 
led to both species being referred to under one name. 
I shall give some notices which may possibly apply to this species. 
“ Here [at Slime Head ‘ the furthest into the sea, and most western point of 
those parts’] a great whale was cast in, the last day of December, 1650 ; and 
another about forty years before.” — O' Flaherty's H-' lar Connaught , written in 
1684, p. 109. 
“Large Whale. — There was lately killed on the N. W. coast of this king- 
dom, in the Bay of Enver near Donegal, a large whale, 62 feet long, 15 feet deep 
as it lay, its tongue filled eleven hogsheads. The whalebone is computed to be 
worth 8 or 900 pounds. The blubber filled 62 rum puncheons.” — Repository of 
the Medico-Philosophical Society, f No. 29. M.S. in Library of R. I. Academy.]; 
In May, 1838, I w r as informed by my venerable friend the late Dr. 
McDonnell of Belfast, that he had heard on good authority of the occur- 
rence upwards of forty years previously of two large whales — one of them 
seventy feet long — on the northern coast of Antrim. Within the last 
twelve years a portion of a small whale taken at Portstewart was sent him, 
and from his description of this animal I considered it to have been B. 
Mysticetus. 
Mr. John Nimmo of Boundstone (Co. Galway) saw the remains of what 
he termed a baleen whale on Deer Island in 1837 ; the blubber was 
boiled and the oil extracted : it was claimed by the lord of the soil, Mr. 
Martin. 
Either the B. Mysticetus or Balcenoptera will be found included with the 
spermaceti whale in extracts which I have made from the writings of Dr. 
Molyneux and Arthur Young. 
The following notices of whales, the species of which must remain un- 
known, may be introduced here. 
In 1782 or 1783 a very old gentlemen of my acquaintance saw a whale, 
seventy feet in length, on the beach of Glenarm Bay — it may be the same 
* In the paper as already published there was a wood-cut exhibiting the ap- 
pearance of the High-finned Cachalot, as seen by Capt. Walker. 
f This Society existed from 1756 — 1784 ; the last date in the Repository is 
March 2, 1772. — Aq. Smith. 
X Copied from a book of extracts lent me for the purpose by Dr. Aquila 
Smith of Dublin, Nov. 1839. 
