194 ALLEN: NEW ENGLAND WHALEBONE WHALES. 



In diving, the whale leaves on the surface, an oval 'slick,' as the whalers call it, an area of 

 water smoother than that surrounding it, due no doubt to the counter currents produced by 

 the displaced water as the whale comes to the surface and withdraws. It is unlikely that 

 it is due, as one author has supposed, to oil from the whale itself. 



The Finback Whale seems but rarely to leap out of water. An instance of this sort, how- 

 ever, is reported in the Nantucket Inquirer for August 10, 1833, but the circumstances were 

 peculiar in that the whale had accidentally run upon some rocks near shore, in the vicinity 

 of Whitehead Light, Maine. After floundering about for some minutes, it managed to free 

 itself, but was "evidently not a little agitated, throwing itself out of the water," as it ap- 

 proached a schooner nearby. Professor W. Kiikenthal tells me that he has once seen this 

 species 'breeching.' Usually however, it does not leap out of water. 



Millais believes that the Finback can appreciably turn its head, notwithstanding its 

 short neck. At all events this seemed to be the case in one instance he observed. 



While feeding near the surface, the Finbacks often swim back and forth in the currents, 

 and with open mouth engulf quantities of water containing small crustaceans or fishes. Ac- 

 cording to Andrews, they turn on their side, and the water, as the great mouth closes, is forced 

 out between the baleen plates. At such times one of the pectoral fins and a lobe of the flukes 

 may be protruded above water. "The animal [Pacific Finback] frequently rolls from side to 

 side exposing nearly the entire length of the body." 



Schools. 



Although single Finbacks are often seen, it is commoner to find them in pairs or 

 schools of greater or less numbers. When traveling in pairs, the two keep close together, 

 almost side by side, diving and rising in unison. Where there is an abundance of food many 

 of these whales will sometimes congregate, and occasionally multitudes are reported off our 

 shores moving in open order and apparently in a concerted manner as if migrating. Such 

 movements are more often noticed during early summer. The few instances following are 

 given for what they are worth, and serve to indicate the size of some of the schools of Finbacks 

 on our coast. 



Captain B. F. Gardner, of the steamboat George W. Donaldson running between Newport, 

 R. I., and Block Island, informed Major E. A. Mearns that almost every year Finbacks were 

 seen, in schools of from six to twenty, usually in pairs. 



A company of four Finbacks is reported in October, 1868, proceeding westward from 

 Nantucket (Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror, vol. 49, no. 18, Oct. 31, 1868). 



A school of whales, presumably Finbacks, was reported near Block Island, R. I., about 

 the middle of July, 1884; they were estimated to be about twenty in number (Nantucket 

 Journal, vol. 6, no. 42, July 17, 1884). 



