THE WHALEBONE WHALES OF THE WESTERN NORTH ATLANTIC. 47 



the travellers were on the Oregon coast near the mouth of the Columbia River, and 

 is as follows : 



"Friday [January 4, 1806]. At eleven o'clock we were visited by our neigh- 

 bor the Fia, or chief Comowool, who is also called Coone, and six Clatsops. Besides 

 roots, and berries, they brought for sale three dogs and some fresh blubber. . . . 

 The blubber, which is esteemed by the Indians an excellent food, has been obtained, 

 they tell us, from their neighbors the Killamucks, a nation who live on the seacoast 

 to the southeast, and near one of whose villages a whale had recently been thrown 

 and foundered. 



"... We continued for two miles along the sand beach [Jan. 8, 1806]; 

 and after crossing a creek [Nehalem River, Oregon], eighty yards in width, near 

 which are five cabins, reached the place where the waves had thrown the whale on 

 shore. The animal had been placed between two Killamuck villages, and such 

 was their industry, that there now remained nothing more than the skeleton, which 

 we found to be one hundred and five feet in length." ' 



The second note refers to the Oregon coast in general, and is as follows : 



" The whale is sometimes pursued, harpooned and taken by the Indians, 

 although it is much more frequently killed by running foul of the rocks in violent 

 storms, and thrown on shore by the action of the wind and tide. In either case, 

 the Indians preserve and eat the blubber and oil ; the bone they carefully extract 

 and expose to sale." 5 



The systematic treatises of Dr. J. E. Gray, beginning with the Spicilegia 

 Zoologica in 1828, and ending with the Supplement to the Catalogue of Seals and 

 Whales in the British Museum in 1871, 3 cover all groups of cetaceans and include 

 many species founded on American material and observations. Gray was accus- 

 tomed to establish genera and species on quite slight differences, real or fancied, and 

 in so difficult a group as the Cetacea this tendency had full play. A large number of 

 the species which he recognized were rejected by the more conservative cetologists 

 who were contemporary with him, or followed him, but in the case of some genera 

 there is no doubt that the condensation has been too great. Among the genera 

 and species which Gray recognized or established are some from American waters. 

 In his Supplement, which contains his last published views, they are as follows : 



Family i. Balsenidse. 



Balsena mysticetus. [Greenland Whale.] 

 Eubalsena ? cisarctica. " Inhab. Atlantic." 



[From Cope. The Biscay whale he makes a separate species, Hunterius biscayensis.] 

 Family 2. Agaphelidse. Scrag Whales. 



Agaphelus gibbosus. " Inhab. North Atlantic." 



[From Cope and Dudley.] 



Rhachianectes glaucus. " Inhab. California, San Francisco." 

 [From Cope.] 



1 History of the Expedition of Captains Lewis and Clark, 2, 1814, pp. 104, iio-m. Coues's 

 edition has the following note (2, p. 750): " Clark I 99 erases ' 105 ' and gives no dimensions." 



2 Op. cit., p. 196. 



* GRAY, J. E., Supplement to the Catalogue of the Seals and Whales in the British Museum, 

 8, 1871. 



