BLACKF1SHES OR PILOT WHALES. 11 



USEFUL PRODUCTS. The peculiar products of the head of this cetacean, the ^perm oil aud 

 the spermaceti, render its capture particularly profitable. According to Captain Atwood about 

 one-fifth of the yield of oil may be generally set down as the amount of spermaceti afforded by a 

 Sperm Whale. The teeth are used by ivory cutters, and the ambergris is a substance valuable to 

 druggists and perfumers. The parts of the body are to be described in the chapter on oil making, 

 where the manner of cutting away the blubber will be discussed. The great lower jaws with their 

 rows of bristling teeth are often brought home as trophies by whalers, and in Provincetowu, New 

 Bedford, or Nantucket may be seen gateways spanned by arches made of these bones. 1 



The following statement of yield of oil from whales taken by New Bedford whalers was 

 furnished by Capt. Benjamin Russell in 1875 : 



Capt. G. Allen captured one Sperm Whale, which tried out 150 barrels. 



Captain Tilton captured one Sperm Whale, which tried out 154 barrels. 



Captain Spooner captured one Sperm Whale, which tried out 130 barrels. 



Captain Knowles captured one Sperm Whale, which tried out 127 barrels. 



A number of captains report Sperm Whales yielding from 80 to 120 barrels each. 



THE PORPOISE SPERM WHALE. A small. cetacean rather closely allied to the Sperm Whale, 

 and called by certain authors the Porpoise Sperm Whale, occurs in the wa'iner parts of the Pacific. 

 A specimen nine feet long was taken at Mazatlan, and was described by Professor Gill under the 

 name Koyia Floiceri. 2 It is of no economic importance. Nothing is known of its habits. A 

 sketch of the animal and its jaw are preserved in the National Museum. 



2. THE BLACKFISHES OR PILOT WHALES. 



DISTRIBUTION. The Blackfish, GJobicephalus intermedius (Ilarlaul Gray, is one of the most 

 important aud most abundant of the small whales of the east coast. It occurs in great numbers 

 to the northeast of the Grand Bank, and oil' the New England and Middle States. IIow far south 

 it ranges is not certainly known. A closely related species is the Pilot Whale or Caing Whale of 

 Europe, G. scini-ral (Lac.) Gray, also called Black Whale, Social Whale, Blowing Whale, and 

 Bottlehead, the Svine-hval of Scandinavia; abundant in the North Sea and the northeastern 



'In Douglass's North America (Boston and London, 1755, vol. i, p. 57), the products of the Sperm Whale are thus 

 discoursed upon : 



"Sprrnia rcti AYhales are to be found almost everywhere, they have no bone, so called; some may yield CO to 

 70 barrels oil called viscous oil, the fittest for lamps or a burning light. It is from this whale that we have the par- 

 mucitty or spermaceti (very improperly so called). The ancients were at a loss whether it was an animal or mineral 

 substance; Schroder, a celebrated Pharmacopoeia writer about the middle of last- century, calls it Aliud genus liitu- 

 miuis (jnod sperina ceti officinae vocant, he describes it Pinguedo furfurosa producta exhalatioue terrae sulphureae. 

 AVe now find that any part of its oil, but more abundantly the head-matter, as the whalers term it, if it stand at ivst 

 and in the sun will shoot into adipous fleaks resembling in somemauuer the chrystalisation of salts: instead of sperina 

 ceti, it ought to be called adeps ceti, in the materia uiedica. This same whale gives the ambergrease, a kind of per- 

 fume, as is musk: anciently it was by the natural historians described as a kind of bitumen, hence the name Anilini 

 gram. Dale, a noted author, in his pharmacologia not long since publishes it as such. It is now fully discovered to 

 be some production from this species of whale, for sonic time it was imagined some peculiar concreted juice lodged 

 iua peculiar cyst is, in the same manner as is the castoreiini of the beaver or Fiber Canadcnsis, and the zihcthutn of Hie 

 civit-eat or hyena, in cystis's both sides of the Ani rima; thus, not long since, some of our Nantucket whalers imag- 

 ined that, in some (very few and rare) of these mule or bull whales, they had found the gland or cystis in the loins near 

 the sperniaticlv organs: late and more accurate observations seem to declare it to be some part of the ordure, dung, 



or al vine excrement of the whale ; squid-fish, one of the Newfound land baits for cod, are s etimes in Newfoundland 



cast ashore in quantities, and as they corrupt and fry in the sun they become a jelly or substance of an ambergrease 

 smell; therefore as squid bills are sometimes found in the lumps of ambergrease, it may be inferred, that ainbergreasn 

 is some of the excrement from squid-loud, with some singular circumstances or dispositions that procure this quality, 

 seldom concurring; thus the Nautucket whalers for some years last, have found no umbcrgreasc in their whales. 

 The Sperina ceti Whale has uo bone or baleiuo in his month, but fine white teeth; they are most plenty upon the coast 

 of Virginia and Carolina." 



-Gii.L: Sperm-Whales, Giant and Pigmy, < American Naturalist, iv, p. 738, fig. 107. 



