HUMP-BACKED WHALES. 263 



Characters. — Body deep and somewhat humped near the 

 middle; the long flippers scalloped along their margins; in 

 colour, nearly the whole of the head and body black, and the 

 flippers, except near the root, white. Total length of adult 

 from 45 to 50 feet; of flippers from lo to 14 feet. Females 

 exceeding the males in size. 



Distribution. — If zoologists are right in regarding all Hump- 

 backs as referable to a single species, this Whale is found in 

 nearly all the large oceans, specimens having been obtained as 

 far north as Greenland and as far south as New Zealand. 



Although frequent in the higher latitudes of the North 

 Atlantic, the Hump-back is but a rare visitor to most of the 

 coasts of the British Islands. Of the recorded specimens, one 

 was washed ashore in 1839 ; while a young one, of which the 

 skeleton is now in the museum at Liverpool, was captured in 

 the estuary of the Dee in 1863 ; a third was picked up 

 dead at sea by a Banff" boat in April, 1S71, and was towed into 

 Wick harbour ; and a fourth full-grown individual entered the 

 estuary of the Tay in the winter of 1883-4, where it was 

 captured. According to verbal information communicated by 

 Captain Gray to Mr. Southwell, it appears that in summer these 

 Whales are by no means uncommon off the east coast of 

 Scotland, and that several have been captured off Peterhead, 

 no less than three having, it is stated, been killed in a single 

 year. 



Habits. — In place of feeding, like the Right Whales, on minute 

 pelagic animals, the Hump-back subsists mainly on various 

 molluscs, crustaceans, and fish. In disposition it is neither 

 very timorous nor very fierce, and it is consequently easy to 

 capture. Its yield of blubber is, however, small, and its whale- 

 bone of poor quality ; and in times, when the Greenland Right 

 Whale was less scarce than at present, this species, like the 



