Afternoon by the Ice 283 



of the Mysticeti. This does not mean that the latter were derived 

 from the bottlenose, but it does show something of the way in which 

 baleen was evolved. Bottle-nosed whales change color with advanc- 

 ing age. The young are almost black, then go brown, and later yel- 

 lowish white. They may develop spots on the underside and flanks, 

 and aged females may be marbled all over. Old males sometimes de- 

 velop a white forehead, and the dorsal fin may go white. 



The bottlenose have strange habits also. They travel about in small 

 family parties, but hundreds of these may join up when they migrate 

 north in spring and south in the fall. At these times vast masses of 

 them travel along at considerable speed and with extraordinary 

 singleness of purpose. They are completely indifferent to man or 

 his works, and will never leave a wounded member of the school. 

 They are the most dangerous of all whales to hunt, as they can jump 

 clear of the water, will flail with their tails, butt with their heads, 

 and even bite, and they can sound quicker than any other species. 

 What is more, they can stay below for two full hours. Most surpris- 

 ingly, they can turn their heads almost as much as a right angle to 

 either side or downwards and they seem to have good vision above 

 water. The stomach is divided into a series of compartments, which 

 probably has something to do with digesting the cuttlefish upon 

 which they seem to feed almost exclusively. Ten thousand cuttle- 

 fish beaks were once taken from the stomach of a single bottlenose. 



Like sperms they have a hydrostatic organ in their heads, pre- 

 sumably to aid them in deep-diving after their food. This contains 

 as much as 225 pounds of fine spermaceti. In addition, a full-grown 

 male yields two tons of ordinary blubber oil, and also has a mass of 

 fat around the lower jaw which is called anarnak by the Eskimos and 

 is a violently strong purgative. 



The bottlenose fishery was a traditional affair in the Faeroe, Ork- 

 ney, and Shetland Islands, and some records were kept in those 

 places from about 1800 onwards. During the first seventy-five years 

 of that century over seventy-eight thousand of them were killed. 

 The practice was taken up by the Hebrideans and then by individual 

 fishermen all down the west coast of Scotland. In 1880 the Norwe- 

 gians fitted out a ship specially for the business and caught thirty- 

 one the first year. By 1890 they had seventy ships so engaged and 

 were killing two thousand annually, so this fishery finally merged 



