24 THE WHALES AND PORPOISES. 



systematically, and they are attached to a particular feeding bank, this is their usual habit. 

 Neither can this peculiarity iu their habits be easily accounted for; their food is as abundant 

 during the neap as it is in the spring tides. 



"The principal food of the Greenland Whale consists of a small crustacean, not larger than the 

 common house-fly, which is found iu greatest abundance when the temperature of the sea is from 

 34 to 35, the ordinary temperature amongst ice being 29, the color of the water varying from 

 dark brown to olive green and clear blue, the blue water being the coldest. 



" The Crustacea live upon the animalculfe which color the water. They are transparent, and 

 the contents of their stomachs can be easily seen to be dark brown or green as the case may be." ' 



11. THE RIGHT WHALES. 



DISTRIBUTION AND AFFINITIES. There is no group of existing mammals so important as the 

 Right Whales, concerning which so little that is satisfactory is known. Zoologists have not yet 

 determined how many species there are, nor what are the limits of their distribution. All that 

 can be certainly said is, that Right Whales that is, the right kind to kill for the whalebone 

 occur in the North Atlantic and the North Pacific, and also in the cooler waters of the southern 

 hemisphere. In the northern hemisphere they never cross the Tropic of Cancer, though in the 

 south, both iu the Pacific and the Atlantic, they have occasionally been known to cross that of 

 Capricorn. 



The Right Whales of the north have, until very recently, been confounded by whalemen and 

 zoologists with the bowhead, or polar whale, to which they are closely related. There is one 

 group of baleen-bearing whales, the rorquals, finners, or finbacks, which have a fin upon the 

 back : the true Right Whales, however, have none. The rorquals, the largest of whales, are 

 very swift and slender, and are believed to occur in tropical as well as temperate seas, all the 

 world over. 



The Right Whale of the Western Atlantic has been described by E. D. Cope, under the 

 name Eubalwna cisarctica. This species, not remotely related to the Eubalcena biscayensis, of the 

 Eastern Atlantic, was formerly abundant on the coast of New England, and, as will be shown in 

 the chapter on the shore whale fishery of New England, its presence in such numbers about 

 Cape Cod was one of the chief reasons for planting the early English settlements in this district. 

 Captain Atwood informs me that they are most abundant off Provincetown, in April and May, 

 though occasionally seen at other seasons. One was killed in Cape Cod Bay, near Proviucetown, 

 in 1867 ; it was forty-eight feet long, and yielded eighty-four barrels of oil, as well as 1,000 pounds 

 of baleen, valued at $1,000. Two or three others have since then been killed in the vicinity, but 

 years now often pass by without any being seen. 2 



A Right Whale of forty to fifty feet was killed in the harbor of Charleston, S. C., January 7, 

 1880, after it had been swimming about within the bar several days. 3 



In evidence of the former abundance of this species, may be mentioned the fact, that when, 

 about the middle of the last century, whales began to be scarce along the coast, a large fleet was 

 dispatched to Davis Straits, where none but whalebone whales occur. E. cisarctica occurs at 

 least as far south as the Bermudas. A species of Right Whale is found also about the Azores. 



In the North Pacific occurs the Pacific Right Whale, or " Northwest Whale" of the whalers, 



'Land aud Water, December 1, 1877, p. 470. 



* WHALING AT PROVINCETOWN. A Right Whalo was captured in Provincetowu Harbor last Thursday, by a party in 

 three boats. Estimated to yield sixty barrels of oil. Gloucester Telegraph, November 6, 1850. 

 3 See Charleston News, January 8, 1880. 



