WHALES AND WHALING 299 



The North Atlantic right whale, sometimes called 

 the black whale because of its color, is somewhat 

 smaller, seldom exceeding fifty feet in length. Its 

 head is about a quarter of its whole length. The 

 right whale is so named because it is a valuable 

 whale and, in the early days of the industry, was 

 considered the right one to capture. The bow-head, 

 or Greenland right whale, has an enormous head 

 and yields excellent whalebone sometimes fifteen 

 feet in length. This whale is somewhat larger than 

 the right whale, often attaining sixty feet in length. 

 The humpback whale, the principal species taken 

 on the coast of California, is also found in nearly 

 all of the seas, being especially common in the 

 South Atlantic, off the coasts of South America and 

 Africa. It usually attains a length of fifty feet; 

 it is short and thick and has a large head with a 

 flat forehead. The finback whale is taken in large 

 numbers in the vicinity of the Falkland and South 

 Orkney Islands. It is sometimes called the razor- 

 back because of its slender form. It is one of the 

 largest whales, averaging more than sixty feet and 

 sometimes attaining eighty feet in length. 



The sei whale was formerly thought to be the 

 young of the blue whale. "Sei" means black cod in 

 Finnish. The name is given to it because it arrives 

 on the coast of Finland at the same time as the 

 black cod. When whaling was confined chiefly to the 

 North Atlantic, the sei was thought to be rare, 

 but since whaling has been extended to all parts of 

 the sea, many of these whales have been taken in all 

 the seas. The sei whale is relatively small and is 



