The Whale's Early Days 47 



Like the sperm whale, the Right Whale is an in- 

 different parent, and the young one learns as soon after 

 birth as possible to attend to its own requirements. 

 It grows with great rapidity, absorbing a prodigious 

 quantity of milk from the mountainous breasts of its 

 mother, milk as thick as the richest cream and yellowish 

 in colour. At this period of its Hfe the young whale 

 is slender and almost graceful in shape, agile and full 

 of play as all young creatures are ; but it soon settles 

 down into the ponderous stately movements of the 

 elder whales, and becomes like them a snug abiding- 

 place for hosts of external parasites, such as barnacles, 

 limpets, and whale-lice — creatures somewhat like the 

 garden wood-louse, but larger, and with tenacious 

 barbed claws, whereby to hold on to the slippery body 

 of their huge host. One of the greatest pleasures in 

 life for them is to chafe their bodies — irritated, one 

 would think, unbearably — against the rugged sides of 

 some mass of ice. Occasionally they may be seen 

 doing this beneath an icefloe ; then, when the need 

 comes upon them for breathing, they calmly rise and 

 break a hole with the crown of their heads where the 

 double openings of the spiracles or blowholes are 

 situated. They remain under water for as long as an 

 hour and a half, and must remain above for a corre- 

 sponding time, no matter how great their peril — from 

 man, for instance. A certain number of breathings 

 is an imperative necessity to all whales, and no irre- 

 gularity or lessening of their number can be endured, 

 no. matter what the circumstances may be, while life 

 lasts. 



In these days the life of a Right Whale is fairly 

 placid and uneventful. True, there are a few, but a 

 very few, ships that still enter the icy seas each year 

 and catch some Right Whales ; but compared with a 



