OCEAN FISH AND OCEAN FISHING 35 



hundred feet ; and in the Melbourne museum is 

 the perfect skeleton of a whale (a rorqual, I think) 

 about 105 feet long. 1 



Large whales are eighteen feet in diameter and 

 about fifty-four feet round. Thus a sperm or a 

 rorqual, a hundred feet long, would be represented 

 approximately by a large and deep sailing barge. 

 In weight, sperms and "right" whales vary from 

 seventy-five to two hundred and fifty tons. The 

 smaller cetaceans measure from twelve to twenty- 

 five feet long. The family are generally of a 

 shining blue-black above, and white or grey 

 below. 



Whales' flesh resembles coarse beef in colour 

 and texture, and, properly treated, would make 

 excellent dog-biscuits, or perhaps a substitute for 

 oil-cake. 



The cetacean family and it is a large one 

 may be divided roughly into two classes : the 

 toothed whales, and the toothless or baleen whales ; 

 but there is some confusion respecting the exact 

 nomenclature of several of them, and, doubtless, 

 many kinds unknown to man exist in the great 



1 The Ostend whale of 1827 probably a rorqual- 

 exhibited in London, was ninety-five feet over all, and a 

 whale of the "right" kind was washed ashore near 

 Lowestoft in October, 1899, measuring eighty feet. 



