NOVEMBER 279 



Now it is clear that it never would have paid to estab- 

 lish whaling-stations in the Shetland Islands on the out- 

 side chance of capturing cachalots ; neither was it possible 

 to tackle the rorquals which abound off these islands 

 with the engines and weapons employed five-and-twenty 

 years ago. For the rorqual is the mightiest animal, past 

 or present, upon the globe. Even the fossil Diplodoccus 

 Camegii, of whose skeleton Mr. Andrew Carnegie lately 

 presented a facsimile to the British Museum, cannot 

 compare with it in bulk, although by means of a pre- 

 posterous prolongation of head and neck that gigantic 

 quadruped attained an extreme length of more than a 

 hundred feet. Until the invention of a combined har- 

 poon and explosive shell, the Norwegian whalers carefully 

 avoided striking rorquals, although they abound off the 

 coasts of Norway, because of the unmanageable strength 

 of these monsters. Steam whalers, however, equipped 

 with this formidable artillery, now enable the men to 

 encounter rorquals upon more than equal terms; and, 

 at the rate the pursuit is being pressed, it cannot be 

 many years before this noble creature becomes as scarce 

 as the right whale of Greenland. 



Nevertheless, even with the most complete equipment, 

 the hunting of this big game is attended with no trifling 

 risks. In March 1903 the steam whaler Puma struck a 

 very large rorqual in Placentia Bay, the shell exploding 

 without injuring the vitals. The whale set off at score. 

 For six-and- twenty hours it dragged the vessel, with 

 screw reversed, and finally was secured at a point upwards 

 of a hundred and twenty-two miles from the place where 

 it received the wound. 



Rorquals belong to the group of Mystacoceti, toothless 



