CHAPTER V 

 THE RORQUALS 



THIS enormons class of whales, embracing many 

 varieties, is often held by whalemen to include all 

 whales that are unfit for merchant's purposes by 

 reason of their scantiness of blubber or overcoating of 

 fat, the absence of marketable baleen or whalebone, 

 and lastly their exceeding speed and agility, rendering 

 them practically uncatchable. This distinction has the 

 merit of being entirely unscientific, yet near enough to 

 the truth to be easily understanded of the people to 

 whom the cumbrously minute, yet entirely necessary, 

 definitions of science are so repugnant. 



The study of whales, or cetology, is a most fas- 

 cinating one, as indeed, I think, is all study dealing 

 with the fauna of the deep sea, but in the very nature 

 of the things is so difficult to attain to any degree of 

 accuracy in, that it is simply pedantic, in writing on it 

 for popular reading, to speak in terms of an exact 

 knowledge concerning a creature of whom we can 

 only see passing glimpses during life, and who when 

 dead becomes corrupt so quickly, and to so great an 

 extent, that he is an intolerable and pestilential 

 nuisance at once. 



In the three great classes of which I have already 

 spoken, there is some approach on the part of those 

 who have hunted them, like myself, to actual know- 

 ledge of their mode of life, their habits and customs ; 



