THE HUMPBACK 395 



and bulkier form, and especially by its immense 

 flippers, which are white in colour, and curiously 

 scolloped on the edge. This whale grows to a length 

 of about 50 feet, and appears to be very widely dis- 

 tributed, though it is not yet certain whether the 

 Humpbacks of the North and South Atlantic and of 

 the North and South Pacific are distinguishable from 

 one another as species or races or not. As a matter of 

 fact, they are probably inseparable, but these whales 

 are particularly variable, and Captain Scammon de- 

 clares that he never saw two alike. This is a true 

 surface-feeding whale, feeding in the North chiefly on 

 Boreophausia, and in the Antarctic on the large 

 southern species of Euphausia ; but it does not disdain 

 fish, especially the Arctic Lodde (Osmerus arcticus). 

 In the north it appears chiefly in summer-time, but 

 also sometimes in February and March. It is said to 

 swim quietly in summer-time, but to be very restless 

 in winter, when it approaches the coast for the pur- 

 pose, so the fishermen say, of freeing itself from para- 

 sites. It is certainly the case that this whale is 

 especially infested with barnacles, and great clusters 

 of the large whale barnacle (Coronula balsenarum), 

 generally clustered over in their turn with Conchoderma 

 aurita, are always to be found upon its skin. It is 

 said to be common about the Bermudas in February, 

 and in the Southern Hemisphere its chief abundance 

 is in the winter season ; so it may well be that this whale 

 crosses the line in its annual migrations. It is also 

 one of the whales of which specimens caught on the 

 European coasts have been found with American 

 harpoons embedded in them. This whale was reckoned 

 a very rare wanderer to our coasts in former times, the 

 great Tay whale of 1883 being one of three or four 

 known examples. But it is now caught regularly in 



