Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2012
The material to be described here was taken from individuals of a school of Pseudorca crassidens, forty-one of which were stranded at Buddon Ness in the estuary of the Tay in November 1935. There is very little published work on this species beyond reports on the occurrence of stranded individuals. Beebe (1924) refers to six skeletons found on the shores of the Galapagos Archipelago, and West (1935) gave a preliminary account of a male fœtus taken from a female stranded in Wales. More recently, Peacock, Comrie, and Greenshields (1936) gave an account of the Tay specimens, while Fraser (1936) published a review of various strandings around our British coasts, and Gill (1935) has dealt with those stranded in South Africa (see abstract in Nature, September 1936). With regard to the reproductive system valuable assistance has been obtained from recent researches on other species by MacIntosh and Wheeler (1929), Wheeler (1930), Ommanney (1932), and Laurie (1937), published in Discovery Reports, while earlier papers, also on other species, by Schulte (1916) and Meek (1918) have also been consulted.