If, as seems probable, the bones are those of the Greenland whale (_Balœna mysticetus_), it is extremely unlikely that the creature which owned them was ever stranded in the Thames. The following letter from Prof. W. H. Flower, F.R.S., is of much interest. He says-- “Pairs of the lower jawbones of the Greenland whale, erected usually as gate-posts, occur in many parts of the eastern counties, especially in the neighbourhood of the old whaling-ports--the Thames, Yarmouth, Hull, Whitby, &c. They have all been brought from the Arctic Seas by whalers, at any time since 1611, when the first ships left England for the Spitzbergen whaling, which (with the Baffin’s Bay whaling) has been carried on with more or less success ever since, though now confined to Peterhead and Dundee. I very much doubt Defoe’s ‘28 feet long.’ Twenty feet, following the curve, is the maximum of the Greenland whale, and no other whale has such large jaws. I also doubt the story of the creature being stranded, because, if so, it cannot have been a Greenland whale--a species which never visits our shores.” Larwood and Hotten, in common with nearly all heraldic writers, innocently treat of whales and dolphins as _fishes_, as they were commonly supposed to be in the Middle Ages. A writer in _All the Year Round_, so lately as the year 1879, commits the same absurd error. It will here be necessary to ask pardon of modern men of science for discussing, under the heading “Zoology,” certain monstrous beasts which, though unknown to us in these enlightened times, were accredited with a material existence by the ancient heralds, and others who wrote in the dark days of several centuries ago. Such imaginary creatures as dragons, griffins, unicorns, and the like, are, of course, here referred to. [Illustration: DRAGON.]