28 MARINE AND AQUATIC TRESPASS EES. 



jaw of the whale seems quite inadequate to their 

 capture. Many species can even shoot through the air 

 to a considerable distance, if hard pressed. 



Yet the whale never seems to be in any distress for 

 food, an emaciated one never having been found. Nor 

 is sight required for the capture, as whales have been 

 taken which have been absolutely blind, and yet were 

 in as good condition as their fellows who had the use 

 of their eyes. Sometimes the whale contrives to 

 capture an enormously gigantic cuttle, large enough, 

 one would think, to defy even the whale itself. Dr. 

 Schwediawer mentions, in a letter published in the 

 ' ' Philosophical Transactions," that a spermaceti whale 

 was captured, in whose mouth was a tentacle of a squid 

 that measured twenty- seven feet in length. This, more- 

 over, was not the complete length, as one end of it was 

 wanting. 



It is believed that the mode by which the whale 

 catches the squids is by rushing through the water 

 with open mouth, and taking its chance as to finding 

 prey. This theory is strengthened by the fact that the 

 remains of fishes, generally the rock cod, are some- 

 times found in the stomach of the whale, though, as a 

 general rule, there is nothing but mangled cuttle-fish, 

 whose horny beaks defy the digestive powers of the 

 captor. Once, part of a dolphin's tail was found within 

 a whale, but such an occurrence as this is not likely to 

 happen again. In a future page, we shall see how the 

 Greenland, or oil-whale, manages to find its food in 

 the northern seas, where there are but few large 

 molluscs. 



I may here observe, casually, that ambergris is 



