CHAPTER XXII 



THE BOTTLENOSE WHALE AND HOW IT IS 

 HUNTED 



THERE is a strange and interesting family of 

 small-toothed whales known as the ziphioids, 

 which owes its commercial importance to a sin- 

 gle species, the bottlenose. This whale seldom reaches 

 a greater length than thirty feet, and takes its name 

 from the bottle-like snout or beak which, at the ex- 

 treme tip of the lower jaw, bears two small pointed 

 teeth almost concealed in the gum. 



These whales were never extensively hunted until 

 1882, when Captain David Gray went north in the 

 schooner Eclipse and returned with a cargo of oil 

 which demonstrated the profits of the venture. The 

 next year he got two hundred bottlenoses and it was 

 not long before the Norwegians began operations on 

 a large scale. In 1891, from Norway alone, seventy 

 ships sailed for bottlenoses and killed a total of three 

 thousand animals. In later years the business declined 

 because of the scarcity of whales and the difficulties 

 and dangers of the hunt, for in no branch of modern 

 whaling is there such a large percentage of fatal 

 accidents. 



The bottlenose ships are small schooners of thirty 

 to fifty tons, carrying several small boats and usually 



258 



