90 MAMMALS. 



found an enormous mass on the foreshore of one of our 

 West Indian possessions, broke off a moiety weighing 

 about 500 ounces, and thrust the remainder under a bush. 

 A fellow-countryman subsequently advised her to throw 

 the evil-smelling "rubbish" away, which she did. As a 

 result the fragment fell into the hands of a more sophisti- 

 cated European, wdio disposed of it in London for close 



on ^3000 • 



The use of ambergris is for the most part confined to 

 the manufacture of perfumes. Ground up with sand and 

 treated with alcohol, in which it slowly dissolves, it is 

 effectual in intensifying and fixing certain essential per- 

 fumes. In the East, and notably by the jMoors, it is also 

 drunk in tea, on which, greasy as it is, it floats. Its 

 flavour, taken in this way, is peculiar, but not unpleasant, 

 and Orientals value it chiefly as a stimulant. According 

 to I\Iilton, it was formerly used in English cookery. It is 

 desirable to point out that, save as part of the ocean's 

 flotsam, this substance has nothing in common with amber. 

 The latter is a vegetable, not an animal, product ; it comes 

 largely from the Baltic, not from the warmer Southern 

 seas; and its value is 5s. an ounce instead of ^5. 



It will now be necessary to enumerate very briefly the 

 score of whales and allied dolphins and porpoises which 

 wander, rarely for the most part, to the coasts of these 

 islands, though, as their collective points of interest have 

 been given above, the notice may in each case be restricted 

 to a few words only. 



The Eight or Whalebone Whale is a great toothless 

 species. The head is large and flat, the baleen, or whale- 

 Southern bone, lying within the upper jaw in some six 

 'Whale. hundred jilates. This species, which has been 

 recorded from the east coast and Orkneys, was confused 

 by the older writers with the allied Greenland w^hale. In 

 colour it is black above, lighter beneath. Head large 

 and flat. 



