NORTH ATLANTIC RIGHT WHALE. 129 



There seems to be no good evidence that fish forms any part of the diet. C. G. Zorgdrager 

 quotes Frederick Martens' Voyage to Spitzbergen that over a barrel of herring were taken 

 from the stomach of a Nordkaper captm-ed at Shetland, but this evidence may be questioned, 

 and it is more than likely that some one of the Finner Whales was meant. 



Stranding, 



It rarely happens that the Right Whale becomes stranded on our shores, except through 

 some unusual chance. The Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror (vol. 57, no. 20, Nov. 11, 1876) 

 gives an account of a "forty-barrel Right Whale" that was discovered in early November, 

 1876, aground on the bar near Capaum Pond, Nantucket, where it had evidently ventured 

 in too close to the shore. Preparations were made to kill the whale: a boat was manned, 

 harpoons procured, and the party set forth to effect the capture, but by this time it had suc- 

 ceeded in freeing itself and though pursued for eighteen miles, eventually escaped. 



Breeding Habits. 



Very little is definitely known concerning the breeding habits of the Right Whale in the 

 North Atlantic. Collett (1909) has recently furnished some new observations made in the 

 Iceland Seas, where of late years a number of these whales have been taken. He states that 

 "three specimens were observed just before copulation on the 7th July, 1908. A female was 

 lying on her back, and on each side of her lay a male with extended genital member, when 

 the vessel came upon them and secured the female." Of twelve females killed in the Iceland 

 Seas in the summer of 1907, Collett states that each contained a foetus, and these were all of 

 nearly the same size, one to one and a half meters in length, the largest with the rudiments 

 of baleen. Of the eight females killed in 1908, none was gravid, which may indicate either 

 that the gravid females go in separate schools, or that they have young but once in several 

 years. If copulation usually takes place in summer, the period of gestation is probably at 

 least nine months or thereabouts, for the young are not born until late winter. 



On the New England coasts, I have found no record of young Right Wliales in the late 

 months of the year, indicating that the young have not yet been born. Most of the records 

 of young Right Whales here refer to cows with their single calves, seen or taken in the latter 

 part of winter or spring. In 1697, Cotton Mather speaks of the capture of a cow Right Whale 

 near Yarmouth, Mass., that was accompanied by a calf twenty feet long. On April 10, 1800, 

 a calf was captured off Nantucket, from among a small number of this species, and made but 

 sixteen barrels of oil. Off eastern Long Island, about the middle of May, 1826, a calf was 

 killed, and three adults. About the first of March, 1870, a Right Whale with a calf appeared 

 in Provincetown Harbor, but both eluded their pursuers. Off eastern Long Island, a large 



