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2. On a Specimen of Sowerby's Whale (Mesoplodon bidens) captured in Shetland
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 September 2014
Extract
Sowerby's whale is one of the rarest of the cetacea which frequent the British seas. It was first recognised as a distinct species by Mr. James Sowerby, from a specimen cast ashore in 1800 on the coast of Elgin, and named by him Physeter bidens. From that time to the present no properly authenticated specimen has been obtained in Scotland, although it is not unlikely that a skull in the Museum of Science and Art in this city, a description of which I gave to this Society in 1872, may have belonged to an animal captured in the Scottish seas. Two, if not three, specimens have been obtained on the Irish coast, but I know of no example of this whale having been caught in England. In my former communication to this Society, I referred to two specimens taken in France (Havre, Calvados), one at Ostend, one on the coast of Norway, and one on the coast of Sweden, and this completed the record of this animal so far as I could find a reference in zoological literature.
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- Proceedings 1881-82
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- Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1882
References
page 443 note * Sowerby's British Miscellany of New or Rare Animals, vol. i. p. 1, 1806.
page 443 note † “On the occurrence of Ziphius cavirostris in the Shetland seas, and a comparison of its skull with that of Sowerby's Whale,” Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xxvi.
page 443 note ‡ See reference by Prof. Agassiz, in Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., Nov. 16, 1867. MrAllen, J. A., “Catalogue of the Mammals of Massachusetts,” in Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard College, vol. i., 1863–1869, p. 205.Google Scholar MM. Van Beneden and Gervais, Ostéographie des Cétacés, p. 396.
page 443 note § Prof.Van Beneden, referred, in Bull, de l' Acad. Roy. de Belgique, Février, 1880Google Scholar tom, xlix., to a female cetacean captured in December 1879 at Hillion, on the west coast of France (Côtes du Nord), which, from the description sent to him, might he thought, be either Ziphius cavirostris or Mesoplodon sowerbyi.
page 444 note * Oversight over d. K. D, Vidensk. Selsk., Forhldl, 1880.
page 445 note * Professor Reinhardt refers in his paper to two American specimens of Sowerby's whale, the one taken at Dennis, Massachusetts, in 1869, the other at Newport, Rhode Island, in the same year. But in a letter which he has favoured me with, he informs me that he is now satisfied that these animals were not Mesoplodon bidens (Sow.) but Hyperoodon rostratus.
page 445 note † Göteborg's Naturhistoriska Museum, Zool. Zoot., Afdelningarna, 1882. Through the courtesy of Dr. A. H. Malm, I received an early copy of his paper, which reached me a few days after my communication was read to the Royal Society. To give sequence to the narrative, I have incorporated in the text the above analysis of Dr. Malm's paper. I am indebted for a translation of Dr. Malm's description, and of that in Professor Reinhardt's paper, to a young Swedish gentleman, one of my pupils, Mr. Arwid Kellgren.
page 445 note ‡ Hvaldjur i Sveriges Museen ån 1869
page 448 note * Mem. de l' Acad. Roy. de Belgique, xii. 1839.
page 448 note † Mem. Couronnés de l' Acad. Roy. de Belgique, Oct., xvi. 1864.
page 448 note ‡ Ostéographie des Cétacés, p. 397.
page 448 note § Opera citata.
page 449 note * These measurements of this skull have already been published in my Report on the Bones of the Cetacea collected by H.M.S. “Challenger,” 1880.
page 449 note † This mandible is imperfect.
page 450 note * Report on the Bones of Cetacea, pl. i. fig. 5, Zoology, vol. i. 1880.
page 452 note * M. Gervais, in his account of Sowerby's whale in Ostéographie des Cétacés, states that the first three cervicals are fused together, but he does not say in which skeleton this has been seen.