302 ALLEN: NEW ENGLAND WHALEBONE WHALES. 



two combatants were "an enormous whale and a thresher." "The whale could be seen to dive 

 in the attempt to escape his tormentor, but the thresher was on him with agile leaps at every 

 reappearance, and the water for yards around was stained with blood." The grain of truth 

 in this and similar stories may be again the active movements of a Humpback Whale seen none 

 too well by undiscriminating voyagers. Possibly, too, the attacker was a Killer Whale (Orcinus) 

 and I suspect this may have been the case also in regard to an account given me in the Bahama 

 Islands, 1904, by a friend who reported that the Resident Justice of Governor's Harbor, Eleu- 

 thera, had witnessed an encounter near that place, between a whale and a swordfish. The 

 fierce Orca or Killer Whale is often called 'sword fish' (Norwegian 'sverdfisk') on account of 

 its high dorsal fin, and is known at times to attack the larger whales. Although I have seen 

 no trustworthy account of such a case, it is not to be assumed that the true swordfish (Xiphias) 

 may not occasionally attack a whale. Thus a wi-iter in the Philosophical Transactions of the 

 Royal Society of London, in 1700 (see Abridgement, 1722, vol. 2, p. 843) in recording a dead 

 Sperm Whale, cast on the New England coast, concludes that "it is not very improbable but 

 that it may have been kill'd by a certain Horny Fish, which is said by Mr. Terrey, in his East- 

 Indian Voyage, to run his Horn into the Whale's Belly; and which is known sometimes to run 

 his Horn into Ships, perhaps taking them for Whales, and there snapping it asunder, as hap- 

 pened not long since to an English Vessel in the West-Indian Seas." That the swordfish will 

 occasionally pierce the bottom of a pursuing boat is well known. 



But tradition is old on this subject. Bartholomew Anglicus, a Franciscan of the middle 

 of the thirteenth century, wrote a treatise De Proprietatibus Rerum, to explain the allusions 

 to natural objects mentioned in the Scriptures. The sources of information for natural history 

 were Aristotle and PUny, and the work was one of the most widely read of mediaeval times. 

 His version reads: "Also Jorath saith, that against the whale fighteth a fish of serpent's kind, 

 and is venomous as a crocodile. And then other fish come to the whale's tail, and if the whale 

 be overcome the other fish die. And if the venomous fish may not overcome the whale, then 

 he throweth out of his jaws into the water a fumous smell most stinking. And the whale 

 throweth out of his mouth a sweet smelling smoke, and putteth off the stinldng smell, and 

 defendeth and saveth himself and his in that manner wise." The "sweet smelling smoke" 

 was perhaps the spout. 



Voice. — Rawitz (1900) afhi-ms that he was able to distinguish several different tones 

 in the noise made by the spouting Humpback, due as he supposes, to the degree of tension 

 stretching the nostrils as the breath is expelled. He beheves that these different tones cor- 

 respond to a voice, but the whole matter is much too uncertain to be accepted as established. 

 A recent writer (F. A. Fenger, 1913, p. 671) testifies to a distinct sound produced as the Hump- 

 back rises through the water to the surface. When waiting for the appearance of a large bull 

 Humpback, which was being pursued in an open boat among the Grenadines, "a low humming" 



