280 ALLEN: NEW ENGLAND WHALEBONE WHALES. 



propensity of this species to frequent bays, harbors, and shallow waters near shore, but also 

 perhaps, implies that they were seeking fish for food herring probably. That so large a 

 number were youngish might be due merely to their lack of experience and wariness, so that 

 they did not avoid the traps which older and more experienced individuals might have shunned. 

 By far the greater part of the captures are in summer, but this may be partly due to the lessened 

 activity with the fish traps in winter, although the abundance of herring in summer is the more 

 probable explanation. 



It is noticeable that the records include the entire Maine coast, are most numerous for the 

 tip end of Cape Cod, whose hook-like barrier seems to act as a leader to bring roving sea crea- 

 tures to Provincetown, thence extend to the waters about Nantucket and the bays of Rhode 

 Island, but do not take in Connecticut. This is in accord with what has been shown for the 

 other species of large whales, that they are much less frequent in Long Island Sound, and 

 seldom penetrate beyond its eastern end. 



Economic Value. 



The amount of oil is too small and the whales are too scattered to induce fishermen to 

 undertake their pursuit. The whalebone is of no value on account of its small size. The 

 occasional individuals taken in fish traps in our waters are either dispatched as nuisances by 

 the fishermen or allowed to escape if they will without damaging the nets. On the Labrador 

 coast, however, one is killed now and then to provide food for the hungry Eskimo dogs, and in 

 Greenland waters they are sometimes killed for food by the Eskimos. Egede (1745) who was 

 for twenty-five years a missionary in that country, says in speaking of the Fin Whales that 

 occasionally were obtained, "The Greenlanders make much of them, on account of their Flesh, 

 which, with them, passes for dainty Cheer." 



Enemies and Parasites. 



So far as known the Little Piked Whale has no special enemies among the larger preda- 

 cious fish or marine mammals. No doubt it may occasionally be forced to flee from the vora- 

 cious Orca, but of this I have found no certain evidence, and its habit of keeping inshore among 

 bays and harbors probably minimizes this danger. On account of its small size and thin 

 blubber it is not an object of pursuit among whalemen. 



In the specimen dissected by Carte and Macalister, a number of intestinal parasites were 

 discovered, a species of entozoan known as Echinorhynchus porrigens. These were found in 

 the wall of the intestine below the duodenum. Their presence was indicated by a number 

 of hard tubercular bodies, like short blunt cones with a small perforation at the apex of each 

 on the inner wall of the intestine. Each perforation led into a tortuous canal within the wall 



