DOLPHINS, PORPOISES 



account of its collecting, dolphin fashion, and swimming 

 in shoals after the ships. In shape it is more like a very 

 long and very fat porpoise than anything else ; it is about 

 the same length as the grampus, but the thickest part of 

 its body sometimes measures eleven feet through, so that 

 the animal would touch the ends, sides, ceiling, and floor 

 of a fairly long corridor. Its colour is glossy black, 

 with a white streak running the whole length of its under 

 side. 



The Orkney whalers make good profit of this animal, 

 for it is easily taken, and relatively almost as valuable as 

 the whale itself. It is no friend to the Scotch cod- 

 fishers, for it eats the catch and sometimes runs off with 

 the tackle. The pursuit and destruction of it must 

 usually be regarded more as a branch of other sea trades 

 than as a separate fishery. 



This is not so with the " Greenlander's Whale," as the 

 beluga is sometimes styled. This animal seems to be a 

 sort of link between the caaing and the narwhal, and its 

 home is nearly the same as that of the former ; that is to 

 say it belongs to the Greenland coast, but travels as far 

 south as the Faroe Islands, and in America is found as 

 low down as Newfoundland. Very occasionally it comes 

 down to our own coasts ; about sixty years ago one of 

 them was captured some distance up the Medway, and one 

 was killed on the Scotch coast in 1815. 



In length it is seldom more than fifteen feet ; it has a 

 broad, blunt head and no tusk, though it has about 

 seventeen front teeth, which generally fall out as the 

 beluga passes middle life. Its skin is quite white, 



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