CHAPTER VI. 
RIGHT WHALE OF THE NORTH-WESTERN COAST. 
Baijena Sieboldh? Gray. (Plate sii.) 
This great northern baleen whale, in its principal proportions, resembles the 
Bahma mysticdus. The latter, however, is destitute of the protuberance called the 
"bonnet," upon the anterior extremity of its beak - like upper jaw, which is a 
peculiarly prominent feature of the Babxna Sieboldii. The color of the Right Whale 
is generally black, yet there are many individuals with more or less white about the 
throat and pectorals, and sometimes they are pied all over. Its average adult length 
may be calculated at sixty feet — it rarely attains to seventy feet — and the two 
sexes vary but little in size. Its head is very nearly one -third the length of the 
whole animal, and the upper intermediate portion, or the part between the spiracles 
and "bonnet," has not that even spherical form, or the smooth and glossy surface 
present with the Bowhead, but is more or less ridgy crosswise. Both lips and head 
have wart -like bunches moderately developed, and in some cases the upper surface 
of the head and fins is infested with parasitical crustaceans. Its tongue yields oil 
like the mysticetus, but its baleen is shorter and of a coarser and less flexible 
nature. The average product of oil of the Balcena Sieboldii may be set down at one 
hundred and thirty barrels; yet there have been many individuals of this species, 
captured in early times, that yielded from two hundred to two hundred and eighty 
barrels. The amount of bone ranges from one thousand to fifteen hundred pounds. 
In former years, the Right Whales were found on the coast of Oregon, and occa- 
sionally in large numbers ; but their chief resort was upon what is termed the 
"Kodiak Ground," the limits of which extended from Vancouver's Island north- 
westward to the Aleutian Chain, and from the coast westward to longitude 150°. 
In the southern portion of Bearing Sea, also upon the coast of Kamschatka, and 
in the Okhotsk Sea, they congregated in large numbers. The few frequenting the 
coast of California are supposed to have been merely stragglers from their northern 
haunts. Some, indeed, have been taken (from February to April) as far south as 
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