6 WHALING 



for the sake of the ambergris he might find. In small quanti- 

 ties it is sometimes found floating in the sea; in the intestines of 

 whales various amounts may be found, of which some $60,000 

 worth is the record. 



The most valuable whale oil on the market, from forty to a 

 hundred barrels of it in a single whale, including ten or fifteen 

 barrels of spermaceti from the big ''case" which forms the en- 

 tire upper head, was the real end and object of ''sparm" 

 whaling. 



Half a century ago, whaling took no account of any other 

 than these two sorts of whales. It was commonly accepted that 

 the presence of finners, white whales, and unicorns (narwhals) 

 was ''a sign that the season is over for killing the Black Whale, 

 which then retires to the northward," but it meant little or 

 nothing else; all whales but the sperm and the right were con- 

 sidered of equally little interest. To-day, however, these lesser 

 whales have taken the place their two great brothers once held, 

 and whoever is at all interested in modern whaling must 

 know something about them. The fin whale group are to be 

 found — largely speaking — everywhere. They are the mainstay 

 of modern Norwegian whaling, both on the Norwegian coast 

 and in the Antarctic Ocean, and of Japanese coastal whaling, 

 and of what remains of British whaling about Newfound- 

 land, Australia, and several groups of islands under the 

 British crown. Also they are to be seen occasionally along 

 our own coasts. In all his various species the fin whale is 

 much more slender than the right whale or the sperm and con- 

 sequently swims far more rapidly and is more difficult to catch. 

 Perhaps it is for this reason that the Norwegians are said to have 

 used poisoned harpoons against him, long before the days of the 

 harpoon gun, the poison consisting of the decaying flesh of a 

 dead whale and promptly setting up septicaemia. Individually 

 he is less profitable than either of the other two, for his baleen 

 is only about two feet long and his oil is not very plentiful. 

 Another point of difference is his small dorsal fin, placed not 

 far from the flukes — whence his name; and an even more con- 



