137 



The colour of the Eight, or Black Whale of the Southern Seas, is, as 

 the latter name implies, uniformly black ; and in size it is somewhat 

 inferior to the northern Eight Whale. 



In regard to their economy, for both so-called species are alike, I 

 shall leave the several intelligent observers, residing widely apart, and 

 well acquainted with their habits, to speak for themselves. 



Mr. Warwick furnished Dr. Gray with the following observations 

 and measurements of a female whale, taken at the False Bay Fishery, 

 Cape of Good Hope : 



" Total length, 68 feet ; width of tail, 15^ feet ; diameter of gullet, 

 2 inches." "I could not pass my hand through the gullet." "These Whales 

 of the Cape I constantly found covered with tubicinella bal&narum 1 and 

 coronula balcsnaris ; but the Spermaceti Whale was seldom or never so 

 covered ; they occur principally on the head, where they are crowded." 

 " They carry on the fishery from the shore, and only one bull out of sixty 

 specimens was killed, the females coming into the bay to bring forth 

 their young." 



" The male whale (E. antipodarum)" says Dr. Dieffenbach, in his work 

 on New Zealand, " is very rarely caught on the shores of New Zealand, 

 as it never approaches the land so near as the females and young do. 

 The season in which whaling is carried on is from May to October. 



" In the beginning of May the females approach the shallow waters for 

 the purpose of bringing forth their young. This period lasts about 

 four months, as in May whales are seen with newly-born calves, and 

 cows have been killed in July in full gestation." " The results of the 

 whale fishery on the coast of New Zealand are of very small amount in 

 the British market, owing to the indiscriminate slaughter of the fish 

 during the last fifteen years, without due regard to the preservation of 

 the dams and their young. The shore-whalers, in hunting the animal 

 in the season when it visits the shallow waters of the coast to bring 

 forth the young and suckle it in security, have felled the tree to obtain 

 the fruit, and have thus taken the most certain means of destroying an 

 otherwise profitable and important trade." " The beach at Tory Channel 

 was covered with remains of whales' skulls, vertebrae, huge shoulder- 

 blades and fins." 



Dr. Crowther, of Hobart Town, Tasmania, whose science and zeal in 

 matters connected with the Cetaceans of the southern seas are so 



1 The genera tubicinella and coronula are formed by small shell-like animals, which, 

 have their bodies and limbs articulated, and both protected by a conical, hard, ezternal 

 covering, also divided into segments. They belong to the class Cirrepeda of the sub- 

 kingdom Articulata, but formerly were included by conchologists among the Mollusca. 

 Several members of the group are found most abundantly adhering to rocks, timber, 

 bottoms of ships, or on the backs of other living animals, attached either directly on 

 their bases or by stems. The assertion in page 88 of the B. M. C., Seals and Whales, 

 that each species of whale has its own peculiar kind of Sessile Cirrepede one the 

 Coronula, another the Diadema, and a third the Tubicinella is not borne out by 

 facts, as exemplified in the present, out of many instances that could be produced. 



