288 



B A L M N A. 



astonishing the ignorant, and too often cheating the 

 simple, by projects which involve plain and palpable 

 impossibilities. 



The period of gestation in the whale is not known ; 

 and we can judge of that of suckling only from the 

 accounts which the fishers give of the cubs. When 

 sucking, which is understood to last for at least a 

 year, they are very fat, often yielding fifty barrels of 

 blubber ; but the capture of them is hazardous, on 

 account of the boldness of the mother whale ; and the 

 mother, when suckling, is not so productive of oil. 

 In that stage of their growth they are called short- 

 heads, because the jaws are but little produced, and 

 the plates of baleen almost rudimental. 



There is one circumstance here which is worth 

 mentioning, as it shows a coincidence where we would 

 be little apt to look for one a coincidence between 

 the whale and the ornithorhynchus of the streams and 

 pools of Australia. The mammary glands in the 

 females of both are of the same structure, and both 

 are destitute of nipples. The mouth of the full-grown 

 whale, with its fringes of baleen, and that of the full- 

 grown ornithorhynchus, with its duck-like mandibles, 

 are most ungainly instruments 'for sucking. The 

 young of both are, accordingly, short-heads at their 

 birth, though the one is not as many tenths of inches, 

 perhaps, in length, as the other is feet. The maxilla; 

 of both are so short, that though they do not appear 

 capable of drawing a nipple, they contrive to squeeze 

 the milk from pores in the areolae of the mammary 

 glands. When two years old, at which age they are 

 just weaned, and being still but imperfectly able to 

 find their food, they are very lean, and on that account 

 disregarded by the fishers, . they are called stunts. 

 When they begin to get fat, and till they have at- 

 tained their full size, they are called skull-fish. 



The whale fishery, of which, in the north seas, 

 whether nearer the coast of Europe or that of Ame- 

 rica, the common whale is the chief object, is an 

 employment of no small peril as well as profit. The 

 details of it are inconsistent with both the nature and 

 the extent of this work ; but the reader who is fond 

 of such subjects will find ample and correct informa- 

 tion in " Scoresby's Account of the Arctic Regions." 



When it is stated that whales are discursive, and 

 have been seen in the middle latitudes, it should per- 

 haps be understood rather of the balaznce generally, 

 than of the common whale in particular. That species 

 certainly can move with great rapidity, even when it 

 plunges downward in nearly a perpendicular line ; and 

 the fat with which it is loaded could be but. little im- 

 pediment to it in making its way through the waters. 

 But the great thickness in proportion to the length, 

 together with the accumulation of fat, would, ac- 

 cording to our notions of mammalia upon land, indi- 

 cate a quiescent and hybernating animal one which 

 dozes out the winter in a state of inaction ; and we 

 find that to be the habit of very many of the mam- 

 malia which reside in those latitudes in which the 

 whale is found in the summer.- On the other hand, 

 those land mammalia which migrate do not accumulate 

 so much fat, or accumulate so much in a layer imme- 

 diately under the skin ; and they are of more stretched 

 and limber form than the species which remain in the 

 same localities and hybernate. Thus far, therefore, 

 the common whale has both the shape, and at least 

 one of the habits, of a hybernating animal, and it 

 wants those of a migrant one. 



But the idea of a warm-blooded animal hybernating 



in the water is one of which we have no instance in 

 nature, and it is one of which the possibility, upon 

 any known principle, is not easily made out. The old 

 popular error, of the swallow tribe leaving the air to 

 pass the winter under water, is now of course 

 exploded by every one having the least knowledge of 

 natural history ; and though it be true that many of 

 the pelagic fishes, which range the surface of the wide 

 seas at some seasons, at other seasons plunge to a 

 depth at which the rays of the sun have but little 

 action, and remain there in what may be called a 

 dormant state, yet these fishes are not only breathers 

 of water, or of the air which is mixed with water, but 

 they are more easily killed by being removed out of 

 the watery element than fishes which naturally dwell 

 at greater depths ; consequently they afford no ana- 

 logy which can be adduced in favour of the aqueous 

 hybernation of whales. 



Also, though it is true that the mammalia which 

 hybernate have more disposition to accumulate fat 

 under the skin than those which migrate with the 

 seasons, yet the fact does not hold with those classes 

 of animals which are more generally migrant in 

 their natures. Migrant birds, just before the time of 

 their migration, accumulate more fat than stationary 

 ones ; and the same may be said of migrant fishes. 

 On this point, therefore, we must not look so much to 

 the general law of the class, as to what appears to be 

 the general law of migration and hybernating. The 

 migration of land mammalia is a slow and laborious 

 process, and they must feed by the way ; and if they 

 are vegetable feeders, they must spend a considerable 

 portion of their time in finding food. An accumulated 

 stock of fat is therefore less necessary for them than 

 for those species which spend the winter in a foodless 

 region, and must supply whatever there is of waste 

 in the foodless season. With migrant birds and 

 migrant fishes the passage is made by long stages, in 

 which they cannot feed ; and as, with both, there are 

 times of exertion, we may suppose that there is con- 

 siderable waste of the system, which can be supplied 

 only by absorption of the accumulated fat. 



Thus, from the form or accumulation of fat in the 

 common whale, we can draw no certain conclusion as 

 to the manner in which it passes the winter ; and 

 there is little in direct observation to assist us in our 

 difficulty. We know that these whales keep more 

 upon a particular ground than the more light and 

 lengthened species ; because, when a whalebone 

 whale happens to be cast upon any shore in the 

 temperate climates, that whale is rarely, if ever, the 

 common whale. But the range is obviouslj' regulated 

 by the food, and the more discursive species are more 

 miscellaneous in their feeding. 



In the present state of our knowledge, the migra- 

 tion of the common whale is the more rational hypo- 

 thesis ; but still it is only a hypothesis, and one of 

 which the proofs are not easily found. Whales have 

 not been traced upon their journey from the one pole 

 to the other, nor have they been found in the middle 

 latitudes, either singly or in squadrons, in such a way 

 as that we could positively say that they were upon 

 their march. Indeed, the fact of their being seen in 

 the middle latitudes at all, is one which, though con- 

 fidently stated, must be received with caution. There 

 they are seen but en passant as matters of curiosity, 

 and not captured or examined closely. The passing 

 voyagers see whales ; but they do not stop to ascer- 

 tain whether they are common whales or not, or 



