THE PRINCE OF MONACO 123 



where the skeletons were being prepared for the museum. 



These were only the first experiences of a series of investi- 

 gations which the Prince has since made into the occurrence, 

 habits, and structure of both the whales and their food, the 

 cuttle-fishes. Professor Joubin, in a paper on the zoological 

 details, tells us that when the stomach of the sperm-whale 

 caught in 1895 was opened, it was found filled with a quantity, 

 estimated at over 100 kilograms, of partially digested remains 

 of these Cephalopods, all of them of enormous size. He 

 describes some of the muscular arms, though much shrunken 

 and contracted, as being as thick as those of a man and 

 covered with more than a hundred great suckers, each armed 

 with a short claw as powerful as those of a lion or a tiger. 

 The stomachs of the sperm-whales usually contain in addition 

 a large number of the horny beaks and other harder parts of 

 cuttle-fishes, the more indigestible residue of former repasts. 



Another case reported is where a whale contained a single 

 arm or tentacle which, " though incomplete from having 

 been partially digested, still measured 27 feet in length," 

 and this seems to justify the common saying of the sailors 

 that " the squids are the biggest fish in the sea." 



It is well known that the sperm-whale is valuable, not 

 merely on account of its blubber, from which oil is obtained, 

 but also because of two very important commercial products, 

 the one being the spermaceti, a wax which occurs in liquid 

 condition in a large cavity of the head, and the other being 

 the still more valuable material, ambergris, w^hich occurs in 

 the form of lumps or concretions in the animal's intestine. 

 It seems probable that this ambergris, which is not found in 

 all sperm-whales, but only, it is said, in those that seem 

 torpid and sickly, is really a pathological product, and it is 

 suggested that it may be produced as a result of the irritation 

 caused by the cuttle-fish beaks and other hard parts, which 

 are frequently found embedded in the concretions. Lumps 

 of ambergris, which is used in the arts both as a drug and also 

 as the basis of many of the finest perfumes, may be found on 



