234 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



west of the Faeroes in March and April, apparently coming 

 from the south-west and proceeding northwards. About 

 Newfoundland the Blue-whale is found over a lengthened 

 season, but is most plentiful in spring and early summer. 

 Captain Ellefson in 1903 got two in February, one in 

 October, and one in November, but a considerable number 

 between these dates, and especially between April and June. 



It is not impossible then, nor even improbable, that 

 the Blue-whale performs something like an annual circum- 

 navigation of the North Atlantic, or it may even be of a 

 still wider area of ocean. But at the same time, owing to 

 the more or less protracted and overlapping periods during 

 which these whales are found in each and all of their 

 northern haunts (that is to say, in Newfoundland, Iceland, 

 Finmark, and Scotland), we can scarcely speak of their 

 route as a definite "migration." It is rather a trend 

 or tendency, a sort of general drift, and not a single 

 migration in a compact body, with definite dates of arrival 

 and departure such as we have, for instance, in the case of 

 the fur-seals of the Pacific and elsewhere. Of the haunts 

 of the Blue-whale in winter-time we have no direct 

 knowledge ; but they doubtless pass the winter a long way 

 to the southward of their range in summer-time, and it may 

 well be (as Guldberg suspects) that they scatter and spread 

 all over the temperate zones of the Atlantic. In the 

 comparatively southern latitudes and warm waters of Japan, 

 the corresponding whales are said to be chiefly caught 

 in December and January ; and we may suppose, accordingly, 

 that in the North Pacific this whale follows an analogous 

 course to that of its congeners in the Atlantic. 



As regards size, the smallest of our male Blue-whales 

 was 42 feet long ; but this was an exceptionally small 

 one, 1 the next smallest measuring 55 feet; the largest 

 male measured 85 feet. The smallest female was 47 feet 

 long, the largest again 85 feet. The average size (or 

 arithmetic mean) for males was 70-3 feet and for females 

 70-1 feet; the two sexes, in short, may be said to be 



1 The skeleton at Hull, ascribed to this species by Gray (P.Z.S., 

 1864, p. 410) and by Flower (P.Z.S., 1865, p. 472), is said to measure 

 47 feet. Cf. T. Sheppard in Hull Museum Publications, i., 1901. 



