STRANDED MONSTERS

Evening Star, Issue 19759, 9 January 1928, Page 2

STRANDED MONSTERS

SCHOOL OF WHALES IN SCOTLAND Regarded at first as a miisance owing to the difficulty of disposing of them, a “school” of 120 whales' stranded last October in the Dornoch Firth proves to be a scientific treasure trove of the greatest value, states a correspondent of the ‘ Daily Chronicle.’ Experts from the British Museum pronounce them to be “ false killer whales,” specimens of which have been sought for eighty years, and thus every museum and university in Great Britain can be supplied with_ a complete skeleton of a species of which only fossil remains have hitherto been known. How the discovery was made was told by Mr M. A. Hinton, assistant keeper of aoology at the British Museum, who, with Mr P. Stannwitz, was sent north when the stranding -was reported. “I had the shock of my life,” said Mr Hinton. “ I expected to find some common specimen known to every trawler and fisherman, but I discovered the very whale for which science has been searching in vain for eighty years. Until last month no scientist had ever seen one of these whales in the flesh. The first trace was found as long .ago as 1840 in the form of a fossil in the Fens by the late Sir Richard Irving. Twenty years later fossil remains were discovered in Tasmania. Scientists had begun to fear that the species was I .witinct. j ‘ “ lit the rate of half a dozen a day f school is being disposed of at a , little whaling station that has

been established there. Not a vestige is going to waste. The blubber and flesh are being sent by railway to Leith, and will be used in the production of various articles. “The dismantled skeletons are being sent intact to the British Museum, whence, after cleaning and reconstruction, they will be distributed among museums and universities throughout the British Isles.” Two huge bulls which Mr Hinton and Mr Stannwitz cut up weighed from SOcwt to two tons each, and even the calves measured from six to eight feet in length. How so large a school came to end their days in the narrow Firth is to some extent a mystery, but Mr Hinton suggests that unusually warm water flowing down the north-west coast early last month brought the cuttlefish inshore. "Hard on their track came the school. We have found nothing but cuttlefish in their stomachs, and the jaws of the whales show that the fish must have put up a strenuous resistance before being slaughtered.” A difficult problem was the transport to the British Museum of two complete whales weighing respectively 34cwt and 22cwt. Both carcasses had to be towed by' motor boat two miles down the Firth to a point near the main road.