November 3, 19 10] 



NATURE 



•9 



nothing but the violent and desperate resistance of 



the giant squid to being- swallowed when brought to 



the surface by the cachalot. 



The whalebone whale, shown in Fig. 6, was struck 



\- the Prince in May, 1896, not many miles from 



Fig. 4. — Skeleton of the Cachalot which furnished th: fragments of gigantic Cephalopods 



Monaco, but it escaped. Its carcase was washed 

 ^hore in September of the same year, near Pietra 

 Ligure, on the Italian Riviera. A remarkable feature 

 of this skeleton is the evidence of fracture and repair 

 of a number of ribs of its left side. This has been 

 ascribed to collision with a steamer, but it is very 

 unlikely that such an experi- 

 ence would leave its mark 

 in nothing but a number of 

 perfectly repaired ribs. It 

 would seem to point to a 

 type of accident to which 

 whales are certainly exposed, 

 and from which they per- 

 haps not infrequently suffer. 



The habitat of the whale 

 is the air and the water, and 

 its functional economy has 

 to be adapted to life in both 

 elements, or rath.r, to life 

 sometimes in the one, a;: 

 other times in the other 

 element. 



In one of the Prince's 

 recent cruises in the Medi- 

 terranean the yacht was 

 found to be steaming in the 

 wake of a whale, which was 

 evidently making a passage, 

 and in a leisurely way. The 

 Prince seized the oppor- 

 tunity to follow the animal without pursuing it, and 

 rhis was done with such skill that it remained uncon- 

 -cious of being followed. It kept a steady course, 

 and, t6 "keep station" with it, the Princesse Alice 

 had to steam at a spesd of about ten kpots. In 



NO. 2140, VOL. 8.^1 



these conditions the whale came up to breathe at 

 regular intervals of between ten and eleven minutes, 

 the intervals between the spouts being the same almost 

 to a second. This experiment supplies an important 

 constant in the natural historj- of the whale. It 



looks very simple, but it 

 will not be readily re- 

 peated, except perhaps by 

 the Prince himself. As the 

 whale was on passage, it 

 is unlikely that it went far 

 i)elow the surface, but 

 there is abundant evidence 

 that, in the search for food 

 or to escape enemies, it 

 penetrates to very consider- 

 able depths. In these ex- 

 cursions its body is exposed 

 tO rapid and considerable 

 variations of pressure. 

 These have to be borne by 

 the structural frame of the 

 animal, of which the ribs 

 are an important part. 



It is generally assumed 

 that, before sounding, the 

 whale fills its lungs with 

 air. but this, being at 

 tmospheric pressure, is 

 uf no use in assisting the 

 body to resist the external 

 pressure of a column of 

 water equivalent, it may 

 be, to many atmospheres. 

 How the power of resist- 

 ance is, in fact, provided, 

 I am not anatomist enoug^h 

 to know, but it must be 

 finite, and it is easy to imagine conditions in which the 

 animal, whether in the pursuit of prey or in the endea- 

 vour to escape being- made itself a prey, may strain 

 it beyond its limits, and the ribs of one side, whichever 

 is the weaker, may give way. In such an accident, 

 beyond being broken, the ribs need nort be seriously 



Fig. 5. — The principal ngxaeaxs, oS Lepidoteuihis Gritnaliil, 1ov^\ 



disturbed, and with the return to the surface or more 

 moderate depths, they would fall into their places 

 again, and that all the more easily because there is 

 little or no pressure of one part on another, every 

 part of the body of a totally immersed animal being 



