The American Museum Journal 



Volume XIV 



DECEMBER, 1914 



Number 8 



AMERICAN MUSEUM WHALE COLLECTION 

 By Roy C. Andrews 



With photographs by the Author 



THE active field work for the col- 

 lection of whales began during 

 the winter of 1907, when two 

 North Atlantic right whales were killed 

 at Amagansett and Wainscott, Long 

 Island, and their skeletons secured for 

 the Museum. The larger one, which 

 proved to be of record size, was beached 

 just at the edge of low tide where surf 

 was continually breaking over it, and to 

 secure all the bones of the skeleton was a 

 difficult task. The weather was bitterly 

 cold and after the second day's work a 

 gale buried half of the body in sand. 

 To dig it out it was necessary to build a 

 breakwater of whale meat and even then 

 the surf washed in from below, filling 

 the pit so that we were working almost 

 up to our hips in blood and freezing water 

 while cutting blindly away at the bones 

 buried deep in flesh. It took two weeks 

 of the hardest kind of work to get the 

 skeletons partially cleaned and loaded 

 into a freight car for shipment to the 

 Museum. 



With these two specimens and a third 

 right whale which had long been owned 

 by the Museum, the Cetacean collection 

 had a nucleus, and shortly afterward the 

 skeleton of a splendid Atlantic finback 

 was purchased through the generosity 

 of Mr. George S. Bowdoin. Mr. Bow- 



doin had already given the life-size model 

 of a blue, or sulphur-bottom, whale 

 which had been constructed in 1907 

 from measurements and photographs of 

 a specimen taken at Newfoundland. 



The building of this accurate replica of 

 the largest animal which has ever been 

 known to live upon the earth or in its 

 waters, was something of a task. A light 

 iron framework was first constructed; 

 over this was stretched iron netting, and 

 the exterior modeled in papier-mache. 

 The peculiar folds of the throat and 

 breast were represented by means of long 

 strips of wood cut to the proper shape 

 and bent by steam. It required nearly 

 eight months to build the model and 

 before it was completed a whole world of 

 experience had been gained as to "what 

 not to do." 



About the time the model was fin- 

 ished it was learned that three shore- 

 whaling stations were in operation on the 

 west coast of America, two being located 

 on Vancouver Island and one in south- 

 eastern Alaska. Practically the only 

 knowledge of the Pacific whales rested 

 upon the work of Captain C. M. Scam- 

 mon, whose book, "Mamie Mammalia" 

 had been published more than forty 

 years before. 



Just what relation the large Cetaceans 



275 



