Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/560

Rh 524 WHALE borders of the ice-fields or barriers, is its home and feeding-ground. It is true that these animals are pursued in the open water during the summer months, but in no instance have we learned of their being captured south of where winter ice-fields are occasionally met with.&quot; The occurrence of this species, therefore, on the British or any European coast is exceedingly unlikely, as when alive and in health the southern limit of its range in the North Sea has been ascertained to be from the east coast of Greenland at 64 N. lat. along the north of Iceland towards Spitzbergen, and a glance at a physical chart will show that there are no currents setting south wards which could bear a disabled animal or a floating carcase to British shores. To this a priori improbability may be added the fact that no authentic instance has been recorded of the capture or stranding of this species upon any European coast, for the cases of its having been reported as seen in British waters may be ex plained by the supposition of one of the other species of the genus being mistaken for it. Still, as two other Arctic cetaceans, the narwhal and the beluga, have in a few undoubted instances found their way to British shores, it would be rash absolutely to deny the possi bility of the Greenland right whale doing the samr. Further details of the migrations and habits of this species are given under &quot;Whale Fisheries&quot; (see p. 526 below). Southern The southern right whale (B. austral is) resembles right the last in the absence of dorsal fin and of longi- wkale. tudinal furrows in the skin of the throat and chest, but differs in that it possesses a smaller head in proportion to its body, shorter baleen, a different-shaped contour of the upper margin of the lower lip, and a greater number of vertebrae. The of these whales have been taken within the last few years. In the North Pacific a very similar if not identical species is regularly hunted by the Japanese, who tow the carcases ashore for the pur poses of flensing and extracting the whalebone. In the tropical seas, however, according to Captain Maury s whale charts, right whales are never or rarely seen ; but the southern temperate ocean, especially the neighbourhood of the Cape of Good Hope, Kergne- len s Island, Australia, and New Zealand, is inhabited by &quot;black whales,&quot; once abundant, but now nearly exterminated through the wanton destruction of the females as they visit the bays and inlets round the coast, their constant habit in the breeding time. The range of these whales southward has not been accurately determined ; but no species corresponding with the Arctic right whale has as yet been met with in the Antarctic icy seas. Genus Megaptera. The whale commonly called &quot; humpback &quot; Hump- (Mcgaptera loops) by whalers, perhaps on account of the low back whale. Fio. 2. Southern right whale (B. australis). genus inhabits the temperate seas of both northern and southern hemispheres and is divided into several species according to their geographical distribution : B. biscaye iisis of the North Atlantic, B. japonica of the North Pacific, B. australis of the South Atlantic, and B. antipodarum and B. novas-zelandife of the South Pacific. But the differential characters by which they have been separated, external as well as anatomical, are slight and subject to individual variation ; and the number of specimens available for comparison in museums is not yet sufficient to afford the neces sary data to determine whether these characters can be regarded as specific or not. The most interesting of these is the right whale, which was formerly abundant in the North Atlantic, but is now so scarce as to appear verging on extinction. This was the whale the pursuit of which gave occupation to a numerous population on the shores of the Basque provinces of France and Spain in the Middle Ages. From the 10th to the 16th centuries Bayonne, Biarritz, St Jean de Luz, and San Sebastian, as well as numerous other towns on the north coast of Spain, were the centres of an active whale &quot;fishery,&quot; which supplied Europe with oil and whalebone. In later times the whales were pursued as far as the coast of New foundland. They were, however, already getting scarce when the voyages undertaken towards the close of the 16th century for the discovery of the north-eastern route to China and the East Indies opened out the seas around Spitzbergen ; then for the first time the existence of the Greenland whale became known, and henceforth the energies of the European whale-fishers became concentrated upon that animal. It is a singular fact that the existence of the Atlantic right whale was quite overlooked by naturalists till lately, all accounts referring to it being attributed to the Greenland whale, supposed once to have had a wider distribution than now, and to have been driven by the persecution of man to its present circnm- polar haunts. To the two Danish cetologists Eschricht and Rein- hardt is due the credit of having proved its existence as a distinct species, from a careful collation of numerous historical notices of its structure, distribution, and habits ; and their restoration of the animal, founded upon these documents, has been abundantly con firmed by the capture of various specimens in recent times, showing that it still lingers in some of the localities where it formerly was so abundant. The only known instances of its occurrence on the coasts of Europe in modern times are in the harbour of San Sebas tian in January^ 1854, in the Gulf of Taranto, in the Mediterranean, in February 1877, and on the Spanish coast between Guetaria and Zarauz (Guipuzcoa) in February 1878. The skeletons of these three whales are preserved in the museums of Copenhagen, Naples, and San Sebastian respectively. On the coast of the United States several FIG. 3. Humpbacked whale (Megaptera, hoops ). hump-like form of the dorsal fin, is very distinctly characterized from all others of the group, especially by the immense length of the pectoral fins or flippers, which are indented or scalloped along their margins, and are, except at their base, of a white colour, nearly all the rest of the body being black. It differs from the right whale and resembles the rorqual in having the skin of the throat and chest marked with deep longitudinal furrows. The baleen plates are short and broad and of a deep black colour. Though common in the North Atlantic between Nor way and Greenland, this whale does not frequently appear on the coasts of the British Isles. One came ashore at Newcastle in 1839 ; another, a young one, was taken in the estuary of the Dee in 1863 and its skeleton is preserved in the Liverpool museum ; and a nearly full-grown animal was captured in the mouth of the Tay in the winter of 1883-84. The usual length of the adult ranges from 45 to 50 feet. Whales of the genus Megaptera are found in the South Atlantic and in both the North and the South Pacific. They resemble those of British seas so closely that it is doubtful whether the differences which have been observed, and upon which several species have been founded, may not have been individual peculiarities ; but zoologists have not yet had the op portunity of examining and comparing such a series of specimens of different ages and sexes from different localities as would be necessary to determine these points satisfactorily. Genus Balsenoptera. The rorquals or fin whales have the Rorqual, plicated skin of the throat like that of Megaptera, the furrows or fin being more numerous and close-set ; but the pectoral fin is com- whale, paratively small and the dorsal fin distinct and falcate. The head is comparatively small and flat, and pointed in front, the baleen short and coarse, the body long and slender, and the tail very much compressed before it expands into the &quot;flukes.&quot; The rorquals are perhaps the most abundant and widely distributed of all the whales, being found in some of their modifications in all seas, except the extreme Arctic, and probably Antarctic, regions. Owing to the small quantity and inferior quality of their whalebone, the com paratively limited amount of blubber or subcutaneous fat, and their great activity and the difficulty of capturing them by the old methods, these M hales were not until recently an object of pursuit by whale-fishers ; but, since the introduction of steam-vessels, and especially of explosive harpoons fired from guns, in the place of those hurled by the human hand, a regular fishery has been established on the coast of Finmark (sec p. 528 below). There are four distinct species of this genus in British seas. (1) Bal&noptcra sibbaldii, the &quot;blue whale,&quot; the largest of all known animals, attains a length of 80 or even sometimes 85 feet. Its colour is dark bluish grey, with small whitish spots on the breast ; the baleen is black ; the flippers are larger proportionally than in other rorquals, measuring one-seventh of the total length of the body ; and the dorsal fin is small and placed very far back. This whale has usually 64 vertebra?, of which 16 bear ribs. Like the others of the genus, this species seems to pass the winter in the open seas, and approaches the coast of Norway at the end of April or beginning of May. At this time its sole food is a small crustacean (Euphausia inermis}, which swarms in the fjords. Several speci mens have been taken on the British coasts, two fine skeletons from the Firth of Forth being preserved in the Edinburgh museums. (2) Balsznoptera musculus, the common rorqual, has a length of 65 to 70 feet, is of a greyish slate colour above and white underneath, and the baleen is slate colour, variegated with yellow or brown.