CHAPTER VIII 

 AT SEA: ON THE WHALING GROUNDS 



I THE whaleman's NATURAL HISTORY 



THE average whaleman was only slightly interested 

 in the anatomy or physiology of his prey, save in 

 so far as some knowledge of these subjects, inevi- 

 tably gathered through experience, was essential to 

 the successful conduct of the chase. He knew that the whale 

 was a mammal and not a fishj he could distinguish at a glance 

 the various kinds of whales, and understood perfectly the com- 

 parative commercial value and probable difficulty of capturing 

 each} he was thoroughly familiar with the location and uses 

 of all those portions of a whale's anatomy which played a 

 part in the chase and in the process of extracting oil and bonej 

 he could estimate to a nicety the number of barrels of oil which 

 any given specimen would yield} he was a past master in the 

 difficult art of large-scale dissection necessary in cutting up 

 a whale's carcass } and he was greatly concerned with the huge 

 dimensions and enormous bulk of those specimens which came 

 under his observation. 



But he knew very little, and cared less, about scientific de- 

 scription and classification. That all whales belonged to the 

 Order Cetacea, which included two Sub-Orders, the Whale- 

 bone Whales (Mystacoceti) and the Toothed Whales (Odon- 

 toceti)} that the former was composed of five Genera, of 

 which two, the Right Whale (Balasna) and the Humpback 

 (Megaptera) were commercially important} that the only rep- 

 resentative of the Toothed Whales which was of significant 

 importance to man was the Sperm Whale (Physeter Macro- 



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