RORQUAL —Physulus Boups. 
Whale with the boat. Making directly for a neighbouring ice-field, the Rorqual shot 
under it, and drew the boat with all its crew beneath the ice, where they disappeared for 
ever from the gaze of mankind. 
Mr. Scoresby, desiring to secure one of these powerful animals, made preparations for 
the chase by employing very short lines, only two hundred fathoms in length, and attaching 
a buoy to their extremities in order to tire out the creature by the resistance which the 
buoy would offer to the water through which they would be dragged by the Whale. 
Two Rorquals were struck, and in both cases the intended victims escaped. In the first 
instance, the Whale dived with such impetuous speed that the line snapped by the 
resistance of the buoy against the surface of the water, and in the second case the line 
only held together for a single minute, and was severed apparently by friction against 
the dorsal fin. A third Rorqual was afterwards harpooned through the error of the 
seamen, who mistook it for a Greenland Whale. As soon as it felt the sting of the 
harpoon, the animal dived with such rapidity that it carried nearly three thousand 
feet of line out of the boat in about a minute of time, and escaped by snapping 
the rope. 
Not contenting itself with such mode of escape, the Rorqual will often turn fiercely 
upon the boats, and avenge itself by dashing them to pieces by repeated strokes of its 
fearful tail. 
These belligerent qualities would make the whalers very cautious in dealing with such 
formidable foes, even if their capture were attended with profit equal to the bulk of their 
prey. But as it is found that the Rorqual is almost valueless when killed, the whalers 
permit it to pass unmolested, and turn their attention to more valuable quarry. The layer of 
blubber which encompasses the Rorqual is only about six or eight inches in thickness, and 
is very chary in yielding oil, a large Whale only furnishing at the best ten or fifteen tons, 
and sometimes scarcely a single ton of this valuable substance. 
As the head of the Rorqual is not nearly so much arched as that of the Mysticetus, and 
the capacity of the mouth is more owing to the huge pouch of the lower jaws than to the 
form of the upper jaw, the baleen, or whalebone, is necessarily very short, scarcely reaching 
four feet in length. Even if its quality had been good, it would be of comparatively little 
