56 WHALES 



generally poor sources. Vitamin C occurs in small quantities in the livers 

 of seals, wild ducks and musk oxen, and since man requires about fifty 

 milligrammes of Vitamin C per day, the Narwhal, which contains 31 -8 mg. 

 per 100 g. of skin, is a welcome provider of this essential substance. The 

 figures compare favourably with those of potatoes, raspberries and melon, 

 and are only slightly less than those of lemons, Brussels sprouts and 

 oranges. The skin is generally eaten raw, which is probably the best way 

 of obtaining most of the vitamin. After all, we are always being told to eat 

 raw greens and raw fruit for the same reason. Whether the raw skin is a 

 tasty dish is, of covu-se, quite another question, but we have already seen 

 that the tastes of different peoples vary. 



Another Arctic dolphin is the White Whale, more commonly known 

 by its Russian name - the Beluga. Like the Narwhal it has a rounded 

 head and lacks a dorsal fin, but the whiteness of the adult is quite unique. 

 The very young Beluga is dark grey; it later becomes mottled and then 

 yellow before assuming its final colour. The Beluga is a coastal species, 

 often moving far up river in large schools. It can be found much farther 

 south than the Narwhal. The Hudson Bay Company started Beluga 

 whaling as early as 8th February, 1688, and has continued this activity 

 to this day, with periodic interruptions. Belugas are also caught either in 

 nets or with harpoons in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, in Alaska, in the 

 Okhotsk Sea where they enter the mouths of rivers, and off Greenland, 

 Northern Russia and Siberia. During the second half of the nineteenth 

 century, Norwegians from Tromsö started Beluga-whaling off Spits- 

 bergen. At first, they caught roughly 2,000 animals per year, but since 

 1900 the number has become greatly reduced. The Beluga is valued 

 primarily for its oil, which is excellent for lighting and tanning and par- 

 ticularly for the manufacture of chamois leather. The meat is usually fed 

 to dogs or foxes, and the skin is tanned locally into a kind of leather known 

 as 'porpoise hide'. 



W^e have already seen that the second half of the nineteenth century 

 was a very difficult period for Norwegian whalers. The North Atlantic 

 Right Whale and the Greenland Right Whale had practically disappeared, 

 and even the invention of the harpoon gun and the consequent capture 

 of other Arctic species did little to cover the mounting costs. No wonder, 

 then, that whalers turned their attention to the smaller Cetaceans. We 

 have just spoken of the Beluga, bvit in addition to it, the Arctic and the 

 Northern Atlantic abound with Bottlenose Whales, which are another 

 rich source of oil. The Bottlenose Whale grows to a length of between 24 

 and 30 feet and is almost entirely black on the dorsal surface. The mature 

 males in particular have a very prominent forehead (Fig. 19), containing 

 a substance very similar to the spermaceti of the Sperm Whale. In the 



