206 WHALES AND DOLPHINS 



He states in his description that a slight beard, consisting 

 of a few short scattered white hairs, surmour s the anterior 

 extremity of both jaws. 



The colours of the Greenland Right Whale are velvet black, 

 grey and white, with a tinge of yellow. Black is the pre- 

 dominating colour, but a while area which covers the chin 

 and front portion of the lower jaw is characteristic of the 

 species. " Sometimes," says Scoresby, " a little of the upper 

 jaw at the extremity and a portion of the baleen are white. 

 The eyelids, the junction of the tail with the body, a portion 

 of the axillae of the tins (i. e. the flippers), etc., are grey. I 

 have seen whales that were all over piebald. The older 

 animals contain the most grey and white, under-sized whales 

 are altogether of a bluish black and "suckers" of a pale bluish 

 or bluish grey colour." 



It is greatly to Scoiesby's credit that, unlike so many 

 who have described these great marine mammals, he does not 

 endeavour to magnify the size of the whales he describes. 

 He discounts records of Greenland Right Whales ioo feet in 

 length, and states that of 322 individuals in the capture of 

 which he was personally concerned, none exceeded 60 feet in 

 length, and the largest he ever measured was 58 feet from 

 one extremity to the other. He mentions one caught near 

 Spitzbergen which measured as much as 70 feet, but 60 feet 

 may be regarded as the general limit of size in this species. 

 It is interesting to note that of this great length the head 

 alone accounts for about one-third. 



The Greenland Right Whale is, as its name implies, a 

 northern form, of which the distribution is. or perhaps more 

 correctly was — for it is scarce to the point of extinction in these 

 days — entirely restricted to the more polar parts of the Arctic 

 Ocean. It has been pursued commonly in the past in the 

 neighbourhood of Spitzbergen, Jan Meyen, the east and west 

 coast of Greenland, Davis Strait, Baffin Bay and in the Bering 

 Sea. 



This whale, in common with all these that bear whalebone, 

 is dependent for its food supply on the small organisms, 

 chiefly shrimp-like animals, that abound in the open sea. In 

 feeding, the whale takes into its mouth the sea water containing 

 the food organisms, drains the water through the matted 



