8 ^ WHALING 



Another of this group is the sei whale, a slender fellow of 

 moderate size, between forty and fifty feet long, and beautifully 

 marked in white and several tones of gray. Whalers promptly 

 identify him by a straight upshot column of vapour very different 

 from the slanting puff of the sperm, and neither so high nor so 

 dense as that of the finback. Like most of the whalebone whales 

 he is inoffensive and only his confusion is dangerous to whale- 

 men. Being a fin whale, he is a whale of the world, so to speak, 

 found in many waters, wherever there are sardines to feed on, 

 but the Japanese know him best and use his flesh, as they do 

 that of the blue whale and the humpback, for food. 



The finback has been called ''the greyhound of the sea," for 

 with a length of sixty to eighty feet he has pointed flippers 

 eight or ten feet long, and very powerful flukes that can drive 

 his slender gray body through the water faster than the fastest 

 ocean lin^. He is a fish-eater, as most whales are not, and feeds 

 on herring along the coasts of the British Isles, where from 

 time to time many finbacks have been stranded, particularly 

 after storms or in winter. He is unmistakably a rorqual, for 

 his ventral folds are many and deep. It is his dorsal fin, of 

 course, that gives him his name, and that frequently identifies 

 him, even to the sailor with a very slight knowledge of whales. 



Another rorqual is the humpback; he is a clumsy-looking fellow 

 with very long pectoral fins (ten to twelve feet), a low dorsal fin 

 or hump, and, for good measure, a funny way of humping his 

 back in sounding. Awkward as he looks, he is, in all his mxO- 

 tions, and especially in his diving, most easy and graceful. 

 His "bone" is short, broad, and coarse, but in proportion to his 

 size he yields a large amount of oil, for though he is only be- 

 tween forty-five and fifty-five feet long, a single humpback has 

 been known to give as much as seventy-five barrels of it. The 

 oil is not of very good quality, more's the pity, since he is found 

 in nearly all seas, swims in "gams," and is neither very timorous 

 nor very fierce; therefore he is easy of capture. No one 

 whale can have all the gifts, however, and in Japanese markets, 

 where whale meat is the one staple meat, the flesh of the hump- 

 back is the most highly prized of all. He is an amusing 



