74 SEALS AND WHALES OF THE BRLTLSH SEAS. 



other hand, a Fin-whale from Java so closely resembles our Balanoptera 

 laticeps that Professor Flower, after the most careful examination and com- 

 parison almost bone by bone, hesitates to pronounce it distinct, and only 

 separates it provisionally. In our own seas this species is of frequent 

 occurrence, more especially on the Scotch coast, where it appears in the early 

 autumn, attracted by the shoals of herring which abound there at that season. 

 In feeding, the Rorquals are not so restricted to minute marine animals as 

 the Right-Whale, but devour large quantities of fish of various sizes, from 

 herrings up to cod. In the stomach of the Newcastle Humpbacked-Whale 

 (the species mentioned immediately before the present one) were found six 

 cormorants, but a seventh, found in its throat, was supposed to have caused 

 its death by choking it. The blowing is accompanied by a loud noise, which, 

 on a still night, may be heard at a considerable distance. It was formerly 

 supposed that in " blowing" the Whale ejected from its nostrils a very con- 

 siderable quantity of water, which might be seen to spout up into the air 

 like a fountain ; and in the performance of this remarkable feat they were 

 generally depicted. Beale, however, in his ' Natural History of the Sperm 

 Whale,' as early as 1838, showed that this is not the case, and the truth of his 

 observations is now generally acknowledged. The power so to eject water 

 taken into its capacious mouth is, of course, impossible, the blow-hole being in 

 direct communication with the lungs, and not with the cavity of the mouth, nor 

 would it be of any service to the Whalebone- Whales, as the very purpose of 

 the baleen is to form a screening apparatus through which the water is ejected, 

 leaving its minute prey behind ; and in the toothed Whales it would not be 

 required. What appears like a jet of water is, in reality, dense vapour — in 

 fact, the breath issuing from the lungs of the animal, highly charged with 

 moisture, which becomes condensed upon exposure to the atmosphere. It 

 often happens, too, that the Whale lets off the imprisoned air just before the 

 blow-hole reaches the surface of the water, or that a wave passes over it at 



