26o SEA FABLES EXPLAINED. 



saw even that animal differ in the latter respect from the sperm whale 

 in the nature of the spout. ... If the weather is fine and clear, and 

 there is a gentle breeze at the time, the spout may be seen from the 

 masthead of a moderate-sized vessel at the distance of four or five 

 miles." 



Captain Scoresby, who was a veteran and successful 

 whaler, a good zoologist, and a highly intelligent observer, 

 says : 



" A moist vapour mixed with mucus is discharged from the nostrils 

 when the animal breathes; but no water accompanies it unless an 

 expiration of the breath be made under the surface." 



Dr. Robert Brown, who communicated to the Zoological 

 Society, in May, 1868, a valuable series of observations on 

 the mammals of Greenland, made during his voyages to 

 the Spitzbergen, Iceland, and Jan Mayen Seas, and along 

 the eastern and western shores of Davis's Strait and Baffin's 

 Bay to near the mouth of Smith's Sound, remarks, in a 

 chapter on the Right whale (Balcena mysticetus) : 



" The ' blowing,' so familiar a feature of the Cetacea, but especially 

 of the Mysticetus^ is quite analogous to the breathing of the higher 

 mammals, and the blow-holes are the homologues of the nostrils. 

 It is most erroneously stated that, the whale ejects water from the 

 blow-holes. I have been many times only a few feet from a whale 

 when ' blowing,' and, though purposely observing it, could never see 

 that it ejected from its nostrils anything but the ordinary breath 

 a fact which might almost have been deduced from analogy. In the 

 cold arctic air this breath is generally condensed, and falls upon those 

 close at hand in the form of a dense spray, which may have led sea- 

 men to suppoie that this vapour was originally ejected in the form of 

 water. Occasionally, when the whale blows just as it is rising out of 

 or sinking in the sea, a little of the superincumbent water may be 

 forced upwards by the column of breath. When the whale is wounded 

 in the lungs, or in any of the blood-vessels immediately supplying 

 them, blood, as might be expected, is ejected in the death-throes 

 along with the breath. When the whaleman sees his prey * spouting 

 red,' he concludes that its end is not far distant ; it is then mortally 

 wounded." 



