Note 51 — NOTES ON CERTAIN FISHES AND MARINE ANIMALS FOUND IN NORFOLK.

In the muniment room at Hunstanton Hall there exists a book of MSS. notes relating to their estates, kept by Sir Hamon and Sir Nicholas le Strange, between the years 1612 and 1723. From this book Mr. Hamon le Strange has been good enough to send me an extract containing the full particulars of the stranding and disposal of a Sperm Whale 57 feet long, which came ashore on their Manor of Holme, on the 6th December, 1626, the skull of which is still in the courtyard at Hunstanton Hall.

Browne had not come to reside in Norwich at that time, and the chapter on the Spermaceti Whale in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica, was inspired by a subsequent occurrence of the same kind, for, as appears from the above note, a larger individual, 62 feet long, came ashore at Wells 20 years later, which he says led him to further inquiry. This would indicate about the year 1646 as the date of the latter occurrence, whereas in his third letter to Merrett, written in 1668, he states that it happened "about 12 years ago," or in 1656. There is probably an error in one of these dates.

Another example seems to have been found at Yarmouth about the year 1652, for we find Browne writing in that year for particulars of its "cutting up." (See Appendix E.)

In the postscript to a letter also in the muniment room at Hunstanton, dated June 11th, 1653, written to Sir Hamon le Strange, who had been consulting him professionally, Browne says: "I pray you at your leisure doe mee the honor to informe mee how long agoe the Spermaceti Whale was cast upon your shoare & whether you had any spermm with in any other part butt the head." It will be noticed that in both the letters referred to he is anxious to ascertain in what part of the body the "sperm" was situated, doubtless for the purpose of confuting the "vulgar conceit" as to the origin of the "sperm" referred to in the second paragraph of his treatise in the Pseudodoxia. His investigations also probably first led to a certain knowledge as to the nature of the food of this animal.

These, however, although the first to be recorded in this county, were not the first or only occurrences of the kind, for there is in the parish church of Great Yarmouth the base of the skull of a Sperm Whale, used as a chair, for the painting of which a charge of five shillings appears in the churchwardens' accounts for the year 1606; many such events in European waters are to be found recorded.

But the most interesting circumstance with regard to these whales is the statement that "two had yong ones after they were forsaken by the water." This event renders it highly improbable that they were Sperm Whales, for the stragglers of that species which have been met with in our waters, and indeed in the northern seas generally, have been almost invariably solitary males, or, in one or two instances "schools" of young males. In the only instance in which both sexes were found, the school was composed I believe of immature individuals. (Vide J. Anderson, "Nachrichten von Island, Grönland, und der Strasse Davis," Frantfurt (1747), p. 248.) Moreover, this view is confirmed by a letter which will be found in Appendix B., where the following passage occurs:—"And not only whales, but grampusses have been taken in this Estuarie … and about twenty years ago four were run ashore near Hunstanton, and two had young ones after they had come to land." A so-called Grampus which came ashore on the 21st July, 1700, was from a description and drawing in the le Strange MS. above quoted, a male Hyperoodon rostratus, apparently nearly adult.

The Grampus (Orca gladiator) (mentioned in the next paragraph) is frequently met with in the British seas, and has repeatedly occurred on the Norfolk coast. Some early occurrences are on record, for instance in Mackerell's "History of Lynn," twelve are said to have come ashore near that town in 1636, and another in 1680. Two very juvenile examples were taken off Yarmouth in November 1894.