98 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 



now been examined by various observers, and in every case (apart from fish) they 

 have been packed with euphausiids and with euphausiids alone. Thus G. M. Allen 

 (1916, p. 200) writes that "on the Newfoundland coast stomachs of several finbacks 

 which I examined contained enormous quantities of the small shrimplike schizopod 

 Thysanoessa inermis." Lillie (1910), too, found the stomach contents of several 

 finbacks taken off Ireland in July and August to consist altogether of euphausiids 

 (in this case Meganyctiphanes) and of fish; and in more than 150 finbacks killed at 

 the Belmullet whaling station on the west coast of Ireland, Burfield (1913) and 

 Hamilton (1915 and 1916) found nothing but immense numbers of these same 

 pelagic sin-imps (Meganyctiphanes), with occasional fragments of fish. Nor have 

 I been able to find any definite evidence that this whale ever succeeds in capturing 

 copepods, or any of the smaller plankton for that matter, though, according to 

 Murie (1865), the stomach of one captured near Gravesend, England, contained 

 fragments of medusae as well as of Crustacea. In short, euphausiids, and these 

 alone, are its support, apart from fish. 



The Atlantic humpback (Megaptera nodosa), which is not uncommon off the 

 New England coast, though never so plentiful there as the Atlantic right whale 

 once was or as the finback now is, subsists on much the same diet as the latter — viz, 

 fish and pelagic shrimps (euphausiids) — while Andrews (1909) found its close ally, 

 the Pacific humpback, feeding on the latter alone; smaller planktonic animals have 

 never been found in humpback stomachs so far as I am aware. 



The blue whale, or sulphur bottom (Balsenoptera rrmsculus), which is not un- 

 common along the coasts of the Gulf of Maine and is numerous in Newfoundland 

 waters, is even more dependent on euphausiids than are the two whales previously 

 mentioned, for it is not known to eat fish at all, on the one hand, or copepods, on 

 the other. All the sulphur-bottom stomachs recently examined (a considerable 

 number in the total) have been packed with euphausiids alone — Thysanoessa in 

 whales from Newfoundland (G. M. Allen, 1916), Meganyctiphanes in others taken 

 off the west of Ireland (Lillie, 1910; Burfield, 1913; Hamilton, 1915 and 1916), and 

 Euphausia in the Antarctic (Liouville, 1913). The destructiveness of these huge 

 mammals is illustrated by Collett's (1877, p. 161) statements that sulphur-bottom 

 stomachs frequently contain 300 to 400 liters of shrimps, and that occasionally one 

 is taken crammed with up to 1,200 liters of Thysanoessa. Andrews (1916), too, 

 writes that this whale feeds exclusively on euphausiids; Millais (1906), however, 

 credits it with a copepod diet. 



The North Atlantic right whale (Eubalasna glacialis), once common in New 

 England waters though now unhappily nearly extinct there (and with it the glories 

 of the New England coastwise whale fishery), subsists largely on euphausiids, 

 notably on Thysanoessa (Kukenthal, 1900). Collett (1909), indeed, found nothing 

 else in right whales taken off the Hebrides and off Iceland. The only eyewitness's 

 account of its feeding habits in New England waters, for which we must turn back 

 nearly 200 years (Dudley, 1734, quoted by G. M. Allen, 1916) tells of "this whale, 

 in still weather, skimming on the surface of the water to take in a sort of reddish 

 spawn or brett, as some call it, that at some times will lie on the top of the water 

 for a mile together." From its geographic situation and mode of occurrence this 



