CHAPTER XXI 

 THE RIGHT WHALE AND BOWHEAD 



WHALING began more than a thousand years 

 ago in the Bay of Biscay, on the coast of 

 Spain. The Basques, who were the first 

 hunters, soon learned that a certain kind of whale, 

 among the hundreds which came into the bay, yielded 

 finer baleen and a greater amount of oil than any 

 other and therefore it was said to be the "right whale 

 to kill." 



In later years other species were gradually recog- 

 nized, but the name "right whale" clung to the ani- 

 mal which was first hunted and thus it is known to- 

 day. The scientific name, Eubalccna glacialis, be- 

 stowed upon it in 1789 by the Abbe Bonnaterre, is 

 hardly appropriate, for the whale is not a lover of 

 cold and does not go into the icy waters of the far 

 north or south. 



As years went by and right whales began to de- 

 crease in numbers, the hunters wandered afar and dis- 

 covered in the waters about Davis Strait and Green- 

 land another whale which was only a larger edition 

 of the first and which eventually became known as 

 the Greenland right whale, or bowhead; its smaller 

 relative was then distinguished from it as the North 

 Atlantic right whale. 



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