2 WHALING 



whale's prodigious size, is the fact that this giant among fishes 

 is not a fish at all, but a mammal. It is warm-blooded, it 

 bears and suckles its young, and although there is no outward 

 sign of any hind legs, and the fore legs appear to have developed 

 into mere fins, yet under the skin are traces of rudimentary hind 

 legs, buried deep in the interior of the animal; and for the frame- 

 work of those mere fins are all the bones and joints, and even 

 most of the muscles, nerves, and arteries, of the human arm and 

 hand. 



Outside of this singularly revealing skeleton and the flesh 

 upon it, whales have a tremendous proportion of blubber, in 

 a thick layer, for warmth and buoyancy — both of which are 

 highly important to the mammal that tries to be a fish. Large 

 and powerful flukes, a great head and no neck, a tiny eye, no 

 visible ear, and only a pair of blow holes (in some species only 

 one blow hole) for a nose — and, speaking very incompletely, the 

 whale is complete. 



There are among the Cetacea some thirty-five genera and 

 perhaps eighty species — a small group from the scientific point 

 of view, however alarming to the layman. For one interested 

 in the whaling industry, however, there are but a few important 

 types: the right whales, the fin whales, the sperm whale, the 

 blackfish, the white whale, the bottlenoses — whale and por- 

 poise — and the killer. Of right whales there are three: the 

 North Atlantic right whale, the bowhead, and the southern 

 right whale. ^ Of fin whales there are three that concern us: 

 the blue whale, or sulphur-bottom, the sei whale, and the fin- 

 back; closely allied to these are the humpback and the gray 

 whale. Of them all, however, only the right and the sperm 

 whales were of any vital interest to whalers — Occidental whalers, 

 anyway — until about fifty years ago. 



The right whale was so called because he was the right whale 

 for the whaler to attack, since his ''bone" was finer and longer 



^The name black whale has been applied, at one time and another, to each 

 of these three right whales. The Nordcaper is the North Atlantic right 

 whale. 



