ON SOME PHOTOGRAPHS OF LIVING FINBACK 

 WHALES FROM NEWFOUNDLAND 



By FREDERICK W. TRUE 



It is only within recent years that works upon cetaceans have 

 TDeen ilhistrated with reproductions of photographs from nature. 

 EarHer writers had to content themselves with drawings, and as these 

 were quite commonly the work of unskilled hands, they were often 

 extremely inaccurate, or even positively worthless as illustrations, 

 From lack of knowledge the artist was usually unable to interpret 

 the form of the various parts of the animal before him and conse- 

 quently introduced features and combinations which had no counter- 

 part in nature. 



As photography improved, opportunities were taken to obtain 

 photographs of skeletons, of dead whales lying on the beach, etc., 

 upon the study of which conclusions could be based without great 

 risk of error. All the earlier photographic pictures of whales, how- 

 ever, represented dead animals, and not unfrequently such as were 

 in a more or less advanced stage of decomposition, whereby a life- 

 like appearance was entirely lost. Photographic representations of 

 living whales were still, therefore, a desideratum. Within the last 

 four or five years some such photographs have been obtained, and 

 the purpose at this time is to describe those which the writer made 

 in Newfoundland in 1899. The only others with which I am ac- 

 quainted are those taken by Dr. Racovitza and Dr. Cook in the Ant- 

 artic Ocean in 1898 and published a few months ago among the 

 results of the voyage of the Belgica. My own photographs are, I 

 "believe, the only ones representing living whales in American waters 

 thus far published. 



They were taken from the bow of the whaling steamer Cabot, be- 

 longing to the Cabot Steam Whaling Company, while engaged in 

 chasing whales in the unquiet waters of Notre Dame Bay, New- 

 foundland. They all represent the common finback, Balcenoptera 

 physalus (L.), and all the individuals were in motion. 



Mr, Aldrich, writing of the Arctic right whale, very justly re- 

 marks : " It is disappointing to see a whale, for most pictures repre- 

 sent him as standing up like a buoy, or posing on his tail on the top 



