the Gardens. At last one morning, while sitting at breakfast, Mr. Bartlett rushed in with a telegram in his hand. “ Read that,” said he. I seized the paper and read “ From , Blackpool, Lancashire, to A. D. Bartlett, Esq., Zoological Gardens. How much will you give for a young, live spouting whale, uninjured?” “ What’s to be done? ” said I; “ it’s a grand chance this; but let us examine the message again.” " Well,” said Mr. Bartlett, “I will go if you mil.” So we looked at the big map of England and the “ABC,” and from these we learnt that Blackpool was some 228 miles from London. Nevertheless, we sent for a cab,

;

SOS THE BLACKPOOL “ WHALE.’

and in a few minutes were dashing away northwards in the express from Euston Square. “ I wonder how big this whale is,” said I. u How in the world are we to bring him home? ” said Bartlett “ we have got a famous whale-pond at the Gardens, and we are promised a Beluga, or white whale, from America.” (See Appendix for account of tame whale and dolphin at Boston, America.) “ I should be glad if we could get one before Mr. Barnum could send us over a Yankee whale.” “ I think we had better bring him home in the steamboat from Liverpool,” said I; but it is a longish voyage, as I see from Bradshaw, of something like ninety hours. I think we must risk the train, and travel by night, for the sake of coolness. Where shall we get the proper supply of water for the journey? I wonder if anybody will insure the whale’s life before we start,” &c.

With such speculations as these, we whirled away through the air, and in the evening, after a long journey, we arrived at Blackpool. We at once inquired anxiously about the whale that was to be seen. “ Whale, sir? I aint heard nought about t’ whale.”

So, ascertaining that the sender of the telegram lived some three or four miles off, we began to seek for the whale up and down the town for ourselves.

Passing by the bath-house on the seashore, we saw a crowd at the door, 11 That must be the whale,” said

;

I; 11 they would be sure to put him into a bath when they caught him, and the people are crowding to see him.” So we came to the door, where a loud voice was shouting, u The cub whale, caught yesterday!

!The whale, the cub whale to be seen alive—alive Sound the gong, Jim. Walk up, walk up! Only twopence to see the monster of the deep!” We elbowed our way through the crowd along a passage to a bath-room and when we got in, after much pushing, we saw a poor little baby porpoise, about two and a half feet long, floating at the top of the water, every now and then showing the white side of his body, and three parts dead. u What a sell!” said Bartlett. “ What a sell!” said I, So we got into the open air, threw up our hats, lay u supine” (like the bad shepherd in the Latin grammar) on the shingle, and laughed at each other for five minutes, that we, the porpoise hunters, should have come over 200 miles to see such a wretched creature as this showman’s whale. So we went back to town again, crest-fallen; still, however, determined, though we had been made fools of by this our fourth porpoise, never to give up our

idea. The fifth porpoise was a little wretch, exactly like the u Blackpool cub whale,” a young sucker; and finding that it would suck his finger, Mr. Bartlett sent for a baby’s feeding-bottle with a teat to it, and placed

it in the young thing’s mouth. He began to suck away famously, and in a short time swallowed over a pint of cow’s milk. When the keeper came to feed his charge next morning, he found it at the bottom of

the bath, quite dead; the probable cause of death being, possibly, that nobody had sat up all night with it to keep the tender infant duly supplied with

food.*

Mr. Dilnot, of Hampton, made - capital hoot-laces from the skin of this young porpoise. In September 1859, one Judy Downs, owner of a fishery weir at Hampton, near Herne Day, caught a young porpoise in his weir: the creature was in perfect health, and quite uninjured. The old man, I regret to say, killed him for the sake of “ his ’ile,” he “ stuck him with his big knife in the throat, and he bled like a pig.” I gave Judy a good scolding for not letting me know of his capture, as I am contem-plating another experiment—turning out a porpoise in a large sheet of water not very far from Charing Cross. The place is all ready, and there are plenty of fish for him to eat, and in July 1867, Mr. Blackwell, of Shoeburyness, kindly informed me that a porpoise with young was a prisoner in a large salt-water pond. Before I could get down to examine it, I received the following sad intelligence: Sib,— am sorry to inform you that the porpoise is dead. At night a coastguard man heard it groaning in the shallow part of the pond, but it went off into deep water on his approach. In the morning it was found dead, with a deep wound in the large vessels of the neck. There was a quantity of blood on the sand and in the water, so the wound must have been inflicted during the animal’s life. I imagine the poor brute came on to the shallow to bring forth its young, and that some brute speared it there early in the morning. It was opened, and the young one found dead inside. It was about two feet six inches long. It is

4t length we received news of our sixth porpoise, and the following events took place:

Late on the evening of Nov. 22, 1863, I received a telegram from John Minter, Esq., Folkestone, stating that he had obtained a live porpoise, which was quite at my service for the Zoological Society. I went down by a fast train early on Monday morning to Folkestone, fully determined to try my very best to bring the creature alive to London. On my arrival at Folkestone I was welcomed by J. Minter, Esq., and by W. Earnshaw, Esq., who had kindly built a tank for the porpoise, filled it with sea-water, and deposited him therein with a sentry to keep watch and guard, and supply fresh water continually, till such time as I should arrive to take him away to London. I at once saw that it was a very fine beast (not a fish, recollect), and seemed in a pretty good state of health, or, as Hall, the man who caught him in his sprat net, said, “ Look at him, sir, he is as nice a young fish as

his hactions,ever came out of the sea—only just watch sir, he is as cheerful as a kitten; I think he is more

a great pity, as such a chance may never occur again.—W. Blackwell. In the museum at Newcastle there is a very nice specimen of a foetal porpoise, and also of a little whale, a true whalebone Whale—a most lovely specimen.

frolicsome since lie has been in the tank than he was when I first catched him in my sprat net. Live out of water, sir? in course he will; I only wish I could live as long under the water as yon fellow can live out ! The Londonof it in the air—wish you luck with him folks don’t often see such a beautiful beast as that,

sir.”

Looking pretty close at the water in the tank, I observed that even though it had been frequently changed it had a blood-red tinge about it; so I lifted up the porpoise out of the water, and saw at once that he had rubbed the bark of the tip of his lowerjaw, and that it was bleeding away just like a man’s chin bleeds when he has cut himself in shaving. “ This haemorrhage will weaken the beast,” thought I; “it must be stopped.” So I ran off to a chemist’s shop, and got a pennyworth of stick-caustic or nitrate of silver, and, lifting the porpoise’s head gently out of the water, applied the caustic freely to the wound. The smarting of the caustic made the porpoise waggle his tail briskly, like a duck just come out of the water on to the edge of a pond: but the bleeding at once stopped then and there, and this was what I

wanted. Knowing that it was not advisable to take the porpoise to London in a tank containing water, because the water splashes down the blow-hole and has a tendency to

clioke him, Mr. Earnshaw, at my request, kindly ordered his carpenter to knock up a rough box, which, by the way, when finished, looked amazingly like a coffin, and we brought it down to the place where the porpoise was blowing away like a steamboat ready to start. We then wetted some blankets with sea-water, obtained a huge can of sea-water and a big sponge, and we were all ready for the start. A few minutes before the train left the station we hoisted, with the aid of a number of fishermen, the porpoise bodily out of the tank, put him on the blankets in his box, and trundled him off to a fish truck in the station.* Mr. Barnett had provided us with a guard’s van, and in we bundled Tennant, myself, and the porpoise. I sat at the end of the box, close to the sea-water tank, so as to have good command of our sea pig; and lucky it was I did so, for soon after the train started the porpoise was u taken worse,” and began to breathe very hard. I at once saw the cause, the delicate membranes composing his blow-hole were getting dry, and would not close properly,f so I set to work with the sponge, and the whole way up to London kept on perpetually wiping and sponging the beast’s nose * I must here return my thanks to Mr. Barnett, the station master at Eolkestone, who gave me and Tennant, the keeper from the Zoological Gardens, who was sent with me to assist in the operations, every facility to take care of our precious charge. t See Appendix, Anatomy of Porpoises.

and body with the wet sponge, so anxious was I that he should live. The train went very fast; and in order that the porpoise should have all the air possible, I opened all the windows and shutters I could get at so that there was a perfect hurricane blowing through the van where we three—happy trio—were ensconced in the semi-darkness, having only my little hand-lamp, which I always carry when likely to have to travel by railway at night. This letting in the draught was evidently a good plan for every part of the journey, save and except the long

tunnels. When we got into these, the steam and smoke from the engine came in through the open windows, got down into the porpoise’s blow-hole, and made him snort and sneeze to such a degree, that I became positively alarmed for his life. His respirations increased from nine to fifteen in a minute, and I thought he was going to die then and there. Once out of the tunnel, he got better again, and the faster the train went the better the porpoise seemed to breathe. He had doubtless never travelled so fast before in his life, even though he can swim at the bows of an ocean steamer going at hei

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