50 FURTHER NOTES ON THE BURNHAM RORQUAL.
examples, and there are certain others that may be found in bloom throughout
the year. With some I have thought it to be due to the influence of the soil, for
the following reason. At certain spots, in almost any year, plants may be found
much in advance of their fellows as regards vegetation. The theory of country
folk is that it is the effect of a 'warm corner.' That theory is not always applic-
able, for all warm corners do not show similar results. Near Willows Green,
Felstead, on the first of this month (February), I observed the catkins of the
Hazel on several plants fully developed and shedding pollen. Adjoining these
were some fully developed catkins of the Sallow, but not as yet shedding pollen.
At the same place, in a previous year, I picked a spray of Hawthorn fully one month
in advance of its time, and similar phenomena have been noticed there by other
folks. This place is high and bleak ; and it seems, therefore, impossible to come
to any other conclusion than that the soil, in some manner, has a stimulating
influence. I believe many other places give like results, could they be put upon
record. It is generally, however, difficult to say positively whether they are not
in some manner sheltered.
" If we are, then, justified in saying that plants have an inherent principle of
variation in their periods of rest, and this principle of variation, although gener-
ally controlled by meteorological agencies, is sometimes affected by causes of
which we are in ignorance, then the transition to any abnormal case does not
appear to be very great. In that of the 'Holy Thorn' the variation seems to
have been so pronounced as to have become to a certain degree hereditary. It is
even possible, when we consider what has been done with culinary plants in
obtaining early varieties that the Glastonbury Thorn might, by a process of
artificial selection, be obtained from the ordinary Hawthorn."
FURTHER NOTES ON THE BURNHAM
RORQUAL
(BALAENOPTERA MUSCULUS).
(Vide The Essex Naturalist, vol. v., pp. 124-8, and vol. vi., p. 115.)
By WALTER CROUCH, F.Z.S.
AS related by our Editor in a note quoted in the second reference
above, the skeleton of the Finner Whale figured by me in
The Essex Naturalist (vol. v. Plate v.), was exhibited last
autumn at Burnham and Southend. It did not, however, find much
favour as a "show" at the latter place, and was removed before I
had an opportunity of seeing it. Since then, when visiting Burnham,
I made enquiry, and found it lying in a loft at the Temperance
Hotel.
The bones were carefully cleaned and articulated by Mr. E.
Gerrard, but are now only partly mounted, the pieces of baleen, and
some of the smaller bones, such as those of the manus, etc., being
packed up in boxes.