140 WHALES AND PORPOISES 



THE FAMILY OF BALEEN WHALES 



Balaenidae 



If seen on land, any member of this Family would recall 

 Falstaff's graphic reference to his own fleshy self, — "A moun- 

 tain of mummy!" 



In one respect, a large whale is like an iceberg. When 

 seen in the water, only a small fraction of its bulk appears; 

 the remainder must be imagined. On the ocean, one sees 

 nothing of a whale save a rather flat back and a jet of dense 

 vapor rising and curving back into the sea. Startling in- 

 deed would be the sight of a whale's bulk, if it could be seen 

 in its entirety. 



The largest and also the swiftest of all whales is the great 

 Sulphur-Bottom Whale, 1 of the Pacific Ocean, found from 

 northern California to Central America. So far as we know, 

 this is the largest animal that ever lived upon this planet. 

 Captain C. M. Scammon, one of the most observant and 

 scholarly of all whalers, records the measurements of a speci- 

 men taken by him as follows: Total length, 95 feet; length of 

 jawbone, 21 feet; girth, 39 feet; length of longest ''whale- 

 bone," 4 feet; weight of 'whalebone," 800 pounds; calcu- 

 lated weight of whole whale, 294,000 pounds; barrels of oil 

 yielded, 110 — not a large quantity. 



The accompanying illustration shows the form of a baleen 

 whale, and the peculiar outline of its enormous mouth. 

 The whales of this Family live upon minute shrimp-like 

 crustaceans, and swimming mollusks (shell-fish) belonging to 



1 Bal-ae-nop'ter-a sul-fu're-us. 



