THE "SPOUTING'' OF WHALES. 73 



ally of the Mysticetics is, quite analogous to the breathing 

 of the higher mammals, and the blow-holes are the homo- 

 logues of the nostrils. It is most erroneously stated that 

 the whale ejects water from the blow-holes. I have been 

 many times only a few feet from a whale when 'blowing/ 

 and, though purposely observing it, could never see that it 

 ejected from its nostrils anything but the ordinary breath — 

 a fact which might almost have been deduced from analogy. 

 In the cold arctic air this breath is generally condensed, and 

 falls upon those close at hand in the form of a den se spray 

 which may have led seamen to suppose that this vapour 

 was originally ejected in the form of water. Occasionally, 

 when the whale blows just as it is rising out of or sinking in 

 the sea, a little of the superincumbent water may be forced 

 upwards by the column of breath. When the whale is 

 wounded in the lungs, or in any of the blood-vessels immedi- 

 ately supplying them, blood, as might be expected, is 

 ejected in the death-throes along with the breath. When 

 the whaleman sees his prey 'spouting red,' he concludes 

 that its end is not far distant ; it is then mortally wounded." 



Captain F. C. Hall, the commander of the unfortunate 

 " Polaris " Expedition, thus describes, in his * Life with the 

 Esquimaux,' the spout of a whale : — " What this blowing is 

 like," he says, "may be described by asking if the reader 

 has ever seen the smoke produced by the firing of an old- 

 fashioned flint-lock. If so, then he may understand the 

 ' blow ' of a whale — a flash in the pan and all is over." 



Captain Scammon, an experienced American whaling 

 captain, who, like Scoresby, could wield well both harpoon 

 and pen, in his fine work on ' The ]\Iarine ]\Iammals of the 

 North-Western Coast of America,' writes to the same 



effect. 



Mr. Herman Melville, who is not a naturalist, but 

 has served before the mast in a sperm-whaler and borne 



