342 NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA [No. 55 



are records of two young with a mother and one record of two 

 foetuses taken from a female. The young at birth are about 20 feet 

 in length. 



Food Tvabits. Glover M. Allen says the blue whale is not known to 

 feed on fish but appears to subsist largely if not entirely upon minute 

 crustaceans, which it engulfs in great quantities and sifts out from 

 the water by means of its matted bristles of whalebone. Twelve 

 bushels or more of these crustaceans have been recorded in the 

 stomach of one of these whales. 



Economic statics. Despite the large yield of oil and whalebone 

 these great whales have not in the past contributed greatly to the 

 profit of the whaling industry, owing to the difficulty of their capture, 

 but now they are being sought from floating factories in the Antarctic 

 seas, and with improved machinery for capture their ultimate extinc- 

 tion seems threatened. 



MEGAPTERA VERSABILIS COPE 

 PACIFIC HUMPBACK WHALE 



Meffaptera rersabilis Cope, Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila. Proc., p. 15, 1869. 

 Meffaptera nodosa (Bonaterre) of G. S. Miller and G. M. Allen. Described 

 from coast of New England, 1789." 



Type locality of versaMUs Cope. North Pacific. 



General characters. Size medium, length about 50 feet; form short and 

 thick, with lower jaw projecting well beyond upper (pi. 48, D) ; eye near 

 corner and well below level of mouth ; pectorals very long and large, scalloped 

 on lower edge; tail flukes broad; dorsal fin low and humplike; numerous 

 knobby protuberances scattered over posterior line of back, top of head, and 

 on chin and edges of pectorals; throat and belly heavily ridged with longi- 

 tudinal folds; baleen small and of inferior quality. Color variable, generally 

 black or rarely gray above, gray below with pale or whitish throat, often 

 mottled or sometimes pure white under the fins and flukes, and on belly. 



Measurements. Male from Bering Sea : Length, 49 feet, 7 inches ; pectorals, 

 13 feet, 7 inches; spread of flukes, 15 feet, 7 inches; tip of snout to nostrils, 

 9 feet, 4 inches. Young at birth, about 12 to 15 feet in length. One captured 

 in Puget Sound near Tacoma on August 22, 1930, was reported as measuring 

 55 feet in length, and estimated as weighing 35 tons (Murrelet, 11 (3) : 75, 

 1930) . 



Distribution and abundance. The humpback whales are said to 

 roam through every ocean in all latitudes between the Equator and 

 the frozen seas, both north and south. Whether the Atlantic and 

 Pacific individuals are specifically the same has not yet been con- 

 clusively shown, but the name for the Pacific form described by 

 Cope is used in preference to the name of the Atlantic species. In 

 the North Pacific they seem to have a more or less regular migration 

 from their winter breeding grounds on the coast of Mexico north 

 along the coast of the continent to summer feeding grounds in 

 Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean, running the gauntlet of the whaling 

 industry all the way, but especially in their northern and southern 

 resorts. Formerly they were one of the abundant and valuable 

 products of the fisheries all along the western coast of the continent. 



General habits. In actions as well as form the humpbacks are so 

 characteristic as to be easily recognized at a distance by the whalers. 

 The large fins or pectorals are used in making graceful turns and 

 curves at or below the surface of the water, and the enormous lungs 



12 M egaptera versabilis Cope given as synonym in Miller's Check-List. 



