196 Our North Land. 



into fibres like hair at the ends. On each side of the jaw there are 

 over three hundred of these rows with the bone usually about ten 

 or twelve feet long. A good sized whale will furnish about one ton 

 of bone, which is very valuable as an article of commerce. The 

 whalebone is of use to the whale in enabling it to separate its food 

 from the water. 



A natural history writer describes the method of feeding of the 

 whale as follows : — " The animal frequents those parts of the ocean 

 which are the best supplied with the various creatures on which it 

 feeds, and which are all of very small size, as is needful from the 

 size of its gullet, which is not quite two inches in diameter. Small 

 shrimps, crabs, and lobsters, together with various molluscs and 

 medusse, form the diet on which the vast bulk of the Greenland whale 

 is sustained. Driving with open mouth through tHe congregated 

 shoals of these little creatures, the whale engulfs them by millions 

 in its enormous jaws, and continues its destructive course until it 

 has sufficiently charged its mouth with prey. Closing its jaws, and 

 driving out through the interstices of the whalebone the water which 

 it has taken together with its prey, it retains the captured animals, 

 which are entangled in the whalebone, and swallows them at its 

 ease." 



I have been told, and the statement is confirmed by such 

 naturalists as I have been able to consult, that the northern whale 

 produces only a single cub at a time. This assertion is now so well 

 established that the Canadian Government will be justified in taking 

 necessary steps to prevent the extermination of whales in our 

 northern waters. It is well known that ten years ago there were 

 whales in the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence sufficiently 

 numerous to employ a good sized whaling fleet, but that, under the 

 treaty concluded in 1873, the American whalers came into these 

 waters with their explosive bombs and other objectionable methods 

 of securing these animals, and that, as a consequence, they have 

 departed altogether. Of course this result would have followed, no 

 matter what was the ratio of their natural increase ; but their great 

 value, their vast numbers, and the slow ratio of their increase, 

 together with the ease with which they may be driven out of our 



