WHALE HUNTING WITH GUN AND CAMERA 



When one of these great pieces of blubber is being 

 torn off a whale's body it sometimes gives way and 

 springs back with tremendous force. At the Oshima 

 station in Japan, my cook who had one day been 

 pressed into service when several whales were waiting 



The folds on the throat of a finback whale. Probably the folds 

 are an adaptation to increase the mouth capacity and to give 

 greater power of expansion to the lungs. 



to be cut in was struck fairly upon the head by a 

 blanket piece and instantly killed; his skull was 

 crushed as though it had been paper and his neck, 

 shoulder, and arm broken. At Aikawa a blubber strip 

 gave way when half the carcass of a humpback w r as 

 suspended in the air, letting the weight of some fif- 

 teen or twenty tons fall upon a cutter standing below ; 



152 



