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CHAPTER I. 

 THE RIGHT V/HALES. 



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THE CETACEA — THE FAMILY BAL.INID/E — THE GREENLAND WHALE — ITS MODE OF RESPIRATION — 

 ITS BLUBBER — WHALEBONE — THE YOUNG WHALE — ENEMIES OF THE WHALE — THE WHALE 

 FISHERY — AMERICAN WHALERS — MODE OF HUNTING THE WHALE — THE HARPOON AND BOMB- 

 LANCE — AUSTRALIAN RIGHT WHALE — SCRAG WHALE — BISCAY WHALE — GENUS EUBAL/ENA — 

 GENERA HUNTERIUS, CAPERIA, MACLEAYIUS. 



THE order at which we have now arrived contains some of the 

 largest animals of the world. In land animals, whose weight 

 has to be supported by limbs, there is evidently a limit to their 

 size ; while aquatic animals, buoyed up by the dense medium of water 

 on every side, and surrounded by an inexhaustible supply of food, attain 

 to enormous dimensions. 



The Cetacea are mammals deprived entirely of hinder limbs. The 

 trunk of the body is prolonged into a thick tail terminated by a broad fin 

 which resembles in its general shape that of a fish, but is entirely com- 

 posed of an expansion of the skin, supported by a tough cartilaginous 

 substance. This tail, instead of being placed vertically, is horizontal, 

 thus enabling the animals to plunge into the depths of the ocean, and 

 rise again to the surface. The head is joined to the body without any 

 apparent neck, and the fore- limbs ai^e so flattened and hidden in the skin 

 that they may easily be mistaken for pectoral fins. Dissection, however, 

 shows that they present, under a modified shape, bones and fingers cor- 

 responding to those met with in the lion and the bat. Constructed 

 entirel)' for swimming, the Cetacea are strictly confined to the waters ; 

 nevertheless they breathe air by means of lungs, and are therefore per- 

 petually compelled to come to the surface for the purpose of respiration. 

 Their blood is hot ; they bring forth living young which they feed with 

 their own milk, and thus, in all details of their structure, differ from the 

 cold-blooded, gill-breathing, oviparous fishes. As the Cetacea often dive 



