THE FITNESS OF RIGHT WHALES 



EVERY age has had its giants ; those of to-day 

 are the whales. For the Sperm Whale and 

 the Right Whales may be fifty feet long, and there 

 are others even larger. The two examples just 

 mentioned suggest the familiar division of the 

 mammalian order Cetacea into the Toothed Whales 

 with functional teeth and the Baleen Whales with 

 whalebone two groups which, if they had a com- 

 mon ancestry at all, must have diverged very long 

 ago, for they are now separated by a multitude 

 of structural differences. Among the whalebone 

 whales there are two (or perhaps three) called 

 " Right " simply because they are the right sort for 

 whalers to pursue, being more valuable, as regards 

 baleen and blubber, than the Finbacks and Hump- 

 backs and other kinds which also bear these precious 

 products, but in less degree. The recent publica- 

 tion of an admirable monograph, Mr. Glover M. 

 Allen's Whalebone Whales of New England (Bos- 

 ton, 1916), has prompted us to attempt an appreci- 

 ation of the Right Whales, of which the Black 

 North Atlantic or Biscay Whale, Balcena glacialis, is 

 now the leading representative. 



First of all, what an extraordinary bundle of 



