326 FOUR-FOOTED AMERICANS 



with all other times of good hunting, and for the same 

 cause. 



"The cow Whales are exceedingly fond of their 

 young, sporting and playing with them in the water, 

 pausing frequently, and floating on their sides to give 

 the calves a chance to take their milk food. If a young- 

 Whale is caught or wounded, its mother usually gives 

 her own life rather than leave it. 



" As the whalers paid no respect to the season when 

 the calves were young and helpless, but even followed the 

 cows into the only homes they had, — the bays where 

 the calves are born and are nursed, — it is little wonder 

 that a hundred years or more of such work has thinned 

 out these sea giants. Now Whale fishing is chiefly done 

 in the Northwest, where Behring Strait joins the Arctic 

 Ocean, and steam craft with long-range guns and dyna- 

 mite bombs are hastening the extinction of, at least, the 

 useful members of the order. 



" Man may get oil from the ground, but there is 

 something yielded by a few species of Whale, like the 

 Bowhead and Finback, for which no substitute has 

 been found. I mean whalebone, which is really no 

 more true bone than is a cow's horn. The Whales who 

 give this substance have no teeth, and large, broad 

 mouths, so that if they open them to take in a mass 

 of moUusks (tlie shell-fish upon which they feed), they 

 would either have to swallow a great quantity of water, 

 or risk losing their meal. Nature made a provision for 

 this, just as the grooved saw-tooth bill was arranged to 

 strain the water from the food of the duck. Plates of 

 horny fibre were developed from the part of the Whale's 

 mouth called the palate, so as to make both a gate and 



