Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/561

Rh WHALE 525 It has usually 62 vertebra?, of which 15 bear ribs. This is the commonest of all the large whales on the British coasts ; scarcely a winter passes without the body of one being somewhere washed siderably behind the end of the snout. The lower jaw is extremely narrow, and has on each side from twenty to twenty-five stout conical teeth, which furnish ivory of good quality, though not in sufficient bulk for most of the purposes for which that article is required. The upper teeth are quite rudimentary and buried in the gum. The pectoral lin or flipper is short, broad, and trun cated, and the dorsal fin a mere low protuberance. The general FIG. 4. Common rorqual (Balxnoptera mvsculits). colour of the surface is black above ashore, usually after stormy weather, and more frequently on the south coast, as this species has a more southern range than the last, and frequently enters the Mediterranean. It feeds largely on fish, and is frequently seen feasting among shoals of herrings. (3) Balscnoptera borcalis, often called Rudolphi s whale from its first describer, is a smaller species, scarcely attaining a length of 50 feet. It is bluish black above, with oblong light-coloured spots, whilst the under parts are more or less white ; the whole of the tail and both sides of the flippers are black ; the baleen is black, and the bristly ends fine, curling, and white ; the flippers are very small, measuring one-eleventh of the total length of the body. There are 56 vertebrae, with 1-1 pairs of ribs. This species, according to Collett, feeds chiefly on minute crustaceans, mainly (Jalanus finmar- chicus and Euphaicsia incrmis, and not on fish. Until lately it was considered the rarest of the whales of European seas, and was only known to science from a few individuals stranded on the coasts of northern Europe at long intervals, the skeletons of which have been preserved in museums. The most southern point at which it has been met with hitherto is Biarritz in France. Since the establishment of the whaling station near the North Cape it has been shown to be a regular summer visitor, and in 1885 771 individuals were captured on the coast of Finmark. (4) Balsenoptera rostrata, the lesser fin whale or rorqual, is the smallest species found in the northern seas, rarely exceeding 30 feet in length. Its colour is greyish black above, whilst the under side is white, including the whole of the lower side of the tail ; the inner side of the flippers is white ; and there is a broad white band across the outer side, which is a very characteristic mark of the species ; the baleen is yellowish white. The dorsal fin in this and the last species is comparatively high, and placed far forwards on the body. This whale has usually 48 vertebra, of which 11 bear ribs. It is common in summer in the fjords of Norway, and is often seen around the British Isles. It has been taken, though rarely, in the Mediterranean, and it ranges as far north as Davis Strait. Rorquals are met with in almost all seas throughout the world, but further and more accurate observations are required before their specific characters and geographical distribution can be made out. Nearly all the individuals hitherto examined with any care, whether from the North Pacific, the Australian seas, or the Indian Ocean, come very near in structure to one or the other of the Atlantic forms described above, so much so that some zoologists have been induced to believe that there are but four species, each of which has a wide, almost cosmopolitan range, while others have described and named almost every individual specimen captured as belonging to a different species. Two totally distinct forms of whalebone whales, Rachianectes (jlaucus, the grey whale of the North Pacific (California and Japan), and Ncolal&na maryinata of New Zealand, have never been found in the British seas (see vol. xv. p. 395). II. ODONTOCETI or Toothed Whales. Only one member of this group, the sperm whale or cachalot (Physder macroccphalus), rivals the large whalebone whales in size, its length and bulk being about equal to, or somewhat exceeding, Fio. 5. Sperm whale (Phyaeter macrocephalus). the Arctic right whale, from which, however, it is very different in outward appearance and in structure. The head is about one-third of the length of the body, very massive, high and truncated in front, owing its huge size and remarkable form mainly to the great accumulation of a peculiarly modified form of fatty tissue, filling the large hollow on the upper surface of the skull. The oil con tained in cells in this great cavity, when refined, yields sper maceti, and the thick covering of blubber, which everywhere envelopes the body, produces the valuable sperm-oil of commerce. The single blowhole is a longitudinal slit, placed at the upper and anterior extremity of the head to the left side of the middle line. The opening of the mouth is on the under side of the head, con- and grey below, the colours gradually shading into each other. The only known species of sperm whale is one of the most widely distributed of animals, being met with, usually in herds or &quot;schools,&quot; in almost all tropical and subtropical seas, but not oc curring, except accidentally, in the Poiar regions. Not unfre- quently specimens appear on the coasts of Great Britain, but only as solitary stragglers, or as dead carcases, floated northwards by the Gulf Stream. It is remarkable that every case of which we have an accurate record has been an old male. The food of the sperm whale consists mainly of various species of cephalopoda (squid and cuttlefish), but they also eat fish of considerable size. The substance called &quot;ambergris,&quot; formerly used in medicine and now in perfumery, is a concretion formed in the intestine of this whale, and is found floating on the surface of the seas it inhabits. Its genuineness is proved by the presence of the horny beaks of the cephalopods on which the whale feeds. The remaining Odontoccti are all animals of much smaller size Bottle- tlian the sperm whale, but to several of them the name of nose &quot;whale&quot; is commonly applied. The hyperoodon, sometimes whale, called &quot;bottlenose,&quot; a name also vaguely given to several species of dolphin, is a regular inhabitant of the North Atlantic, passing the summer in the Spitzbergen seas and going farther south in winter. It is allied to the sperm whale, and resembles it in possessing a large store of oil in the upper part of the head, which yields spermaceti when refined ; on this account, and also for the sake of the blubber, which supplies an oil almost indistinguishable from sperm oil, this whale has been the object of a regular chase in recent years. It is stated in the article MAMMALIA (vol. xv. p. 396) that there are two species of this genus, Hyperoodon rostratus, the common hyperoodon, and H. latifrons, attaining when adult, respectively, the length of 24 and 30 feet ; but recent investiga tions have shown that the latter is the male and the former the female of the same species. They feed exclusively on cephalopods, and are practically toothless ; the only teeth which exist in the adult, namely, a small pair at the front of the lower jaw, are concealed beneath the gum during life. Smaller allied species, be longing to the genera Ziphius and Mesoplodon, occasionally find their way into British seas, but their proper habitat appears to be the South Seas. It frequently happens that large herds or &quot;schools&quot; of whales Ca ing or are captured in bays or inlets on the rocky coasts of Scotland, pilot or the Orkney or Shetland Islands. These are the so-called ca ing whale, or pilot whale (GloMccphalus rnelas), the grindhval of the Faroe Islanders and Norwegians. They attain the length of 20 feet, and are of a nearly uniform black colour, except a line down the middle of the under surface, which is grey. They are characterized by the round or globose form of the fore-part of the head, occa sioned by the great development of a cushion of fat placed over the rostrum of the skull in front of the blowhole, and by the great length and narrowness of the pectoral fin. Their destruction in large numbers, amounting sometimes to hundreds at a time, arises from their eminently sociable character and their habit, when attacked, of rushing together and blindly following the leaders of the herd. When they are seen in the neighbourhood of land, the fishermen endeavour to get to seaward of them in their boats, and with shouting and firing of guns to drive them into a bay or fjord, pursuing them until they run themselves on shore in their alarm. The beluga (Dclphtnaptcrus leucas) is often called the Beluga &quot;white Avhale,&quot; though scarcely exceeding the length of or white 12 feet. Its colour is almost pure white, and it has no whale, dorsal fin, but a low ridge in its place. It is an in habitant of the Arctic seas, extending on the American coast as far south as the river St Lawrence, which it ascends for a considerable distance. Several instances of its occurrence on the coast of Scotland are recorded, and it has been kept for some time in captivity in America, and even in London. Its external char acters are represented in vol. xv. p. 399, fig. 50. The other cetaceans of this group are generally distinguished as narwhals, grampuses, killers, bottlenoses, dolphins, and porpoises, and are not usually called whales. We have no certain knowledge of the existence of whalebone Fossil whales before the latter part of the Eocene period. The earliest species. known forms were allied to the existing Balxnoptcrx. Right whales (Balasnft), as might be expected in the case of such a highly