278 WHALES 



Whale Fisheries (Scotland) Bill, a measure designed to 

 regulate the youngest of our home industries. There 

 must be many persons to whom the very existence of 

 that industry is unknown, and these may be surprised 

 to learn the proportions to which it has grown within 

 the few years that have passed since its establishment 

 in Scottish waters by Norwegian fishing companies. I 

 have before me the returns of whales killed at the four 

 stations in Shetland during the season of 1904, showing 

 a total of no less than four hundred and fifteen, whereof 

 all were finners or rorquals (Balcenoptera musculus) ex- 

 cept twelve namely, one sperm whale, eight hump- backs 

 (Megaptera loops), and three Rudolphi's rorquals (Balce- 

 noptera borealis). By far the most valuable of these 

 prizes was the sperm whale or cachalot (Physeter macro- 

 cephalus), which occurs but rarely in British waters, being 

 a native of tropical or subtropical seas. The cavity in 

 its enormous head contains that peculiar form of fat 

 which, when refined, becomes spermaceti; and the vast 

 tracts of blubber along the sides of the animal are the 

 source of sperm oil. A cachalot of average size yields 

 about sixty barrels, equal to ten tons, of this valuable oil. 

 The animal belongs to the group Odontoceti, or toothed 

 whales, carrying five-and-twenty serviceable pieces of fine 

 ivory in its lower jaw. The specimen secured by the 

 Alexandra Company measured fifty-six feet long, and had 

 been making effective use of its excursion into northern 

 waters, seeing that its stomach contained the remains of 

 many cuttle-fish, a large skate, an angler fish (Lophius), 

 the head of a great shark, as well as some lumps of 

 blubber which the shark, just before it met its doom, had 

 bitten out of the flanks of a rorqual. 



