Chicacfo Natural History Museum 



Formerly Mi/ei9>Mii6eum News 



Vol. 16 



JULY-AUGUST, 1945 



No8. 7-8 



IN INLAND CHICAGO— THE WHALES OF ALL THE WORLD'S SEAS AND OCEANS 



By KARL P. SCHMIDT 



CHIEF CURATOR, DEPARTMENT OP ZOOLXXIY 



Whales have been of such great economic 

 importance to man, and their pursuit is so 

 spectacular and in former times was such a 

 dangerous trade, that the very word "whale" 



present a conspectus of the whales of the 

 world in the space available, it has been 

 necessary to scale the larger whale models 

 to one-tenth natural size. The smaller 

 types of toothed whales, known as por- 

 poises or dolphins, are shown in life-size 



from whales' teeth by the sailors on their 

 long voyages. 



Represented in the hall are most of the 

 distinct types of whales in the seas (approxi- 

 mately one-half of the species and sub- 

 species of whales now known). 



IN THE DAYS OF THE WHALERS 



Large mural by Stiff Artist Arthur G. Rueckcrt in the new Hall of Whales. It depicts the dramatic and hazardous moment when the men in the whaleboat come alongside the harpooned 



giant of the sea to drive the hand lance into its heart. 



is almost as familiar as "dog" and "cat." 

 The first group of visitors to the new Hall 

 of Whales (Hall N-1) in the Museum was a 

 class in American literature, which had been 

 studying the novelist Herman Melville 

 whose "Moby Dick" is probably the most 

 famous of all whales. The newly opened 

 hall, preparation of which has been under 

 way for the last five years, is adjacent to 

 one containing habitat groups of other 

 marine mammals (Hall N), and this in turn 

 leads into the Halls of Fishes (O) and of 

 Marine Invertebrates (M). 



The vast size of whales, and their con- 

 siderable variety, present a major problem 

 for museum exhibition, and in order to 



models. All have been prepared in carefully 

 painted plaster casts from models in clay. 

 The wall space above the cases has been 

 used for simple murals showing interesting 

 features about whales, such as a mother 

 whale nursing its young, killer whales 

 attacking the bowhead whale, and porpoi.ses 

 playing about the bow of a ship. A large 

 mural at the end of the hall presents the most 

 dramatic moment of the pursuit of whales 

 by sailing ship and whaleboat, when the 

 whaleboat is held against the whale's very 

 side until the hand lance is driven to its 

 heart. Further accessories in the hall 

 include a case of whaling tools, and the novel 

 "scrimshaws" and "jagging wheels" carved 



Many who know that whales are the 

 largest animals living in the world today 

 are unaware that they are the largest 

 animals ever known, either of living or 

 extinct creatures — far larger even than the 

 greatest of the dinosaurs, reptilian giants 

 of the prehistoric world. 



To give an easy measure of comparison 

 in the hall, figures of men in whaling ship 

 regalia, scaled to represent six-footers in 

 ratio to the one-tenth size whale models, 

 are displayed with them. 



Whales fall into two sharply defined 

 groups, toothed and whaleboned whales. 

 The toothed species feed on fishes, squids, 

 or even larger animals. Whalebone whales 



