Midday North and South 239 



grounds whatsoever, other than the supposed authority of his name 

 and position. Among other asininities, he had seen fit to state that 

 right whales existed only in the northern hemisphere, and nobody 

 had dared question him, despite the multimilUon-dollar industry 

 founded on these beasts in the South Pacific. Such is the provenance 

 of orthodoxy, however, that when he was not only challenged but 

 shown to have talked complete nonsense by Brierly, he resorted to 

 outright trickery by stating that the southern right whales were 

 "a different species." 



The effects of Professor Owen's mendacity have lingered until the 

 present day, for there is still debate as to whether the southern black 

 right whale is truly a different species and whether it is completely 

 isolated from its remaining northern cousins. These mammals do 

 not customarily live in the intervening warmer waters of the tropics, 

 but they do migrate annually towards the Tropic of Cancer and of 

 Capricorn from the colder waters of the north and south, and they 

 have quite often been taken wandering about in mid-ocean near 

 the equator. There is no reason why they should not occasionally 

 stray from the Arctic to the Antarctic and vice versa; further, there 

 do not seem to be any really valid reasons for separating the two 

 except on geographical grounds. This, of course, is begging the 

 question. At most there may be four groups to which specific names 

 have been given: Balaena Biscay ensis for those in the North Atlantic; 

 Balaena australis, rather muddlingly, for those from the South At- 

 lantic; Balaena antipodarum for the South Pacific; and Balaena 

 japonica for the North Pacific populations. In the Southern Hemi- 

 sphere they inhabit a wide belt of ocean ringing the Antarctic from 

 the Ice-front north to the coasts of South America, Australia, and 

 South Africa. Today they are rare in all areas. 



While the South Seas lack a representative of the bowhead, they 

 are the habitat of most other oceanic species, and they appear to be 

 the chosen areas for certain groups and for a variety of lesser-known 

 types. Among these is a little, twenty-foot relative of the black right 

 known as the Pigmy Right Whale (Neobalaena marginata). This 

 has been recorded only from southern areas, only a few specimens 

 have been found stranded, and nothing is known of its habits. Ex- 

 ternally it looks just like a little black right, but it has a small tri- 

 angular dorsal fin. Internally it displays some very odd features. 



