234 VERTEBRATA. MAMMALIA. 



carcass, or "kreng," is cut adrift as valueless. A 

 large Whale will frequently yield upwards of twenty 

 tons of rendered oil ; which, with the other products, 

 may be worth nearly a thousand pounds. 



The locality in which these enterprises are pro- 

 secuted, is associated with much of difficulty, danger, 

 privation, and hardship : ships are often crushed 

 by the irresistible pressure of icebergs, or frozen 

 up and fast locked in dreary ice-fields, to be im- 

 prisoned with their hapless crews, through the 

 length of an Arctic winter, exposed to all the 

 horrors of cold and starvation. And even the very 

 chase itself is one of imminent peril; the fearless 

 seaman rushes almost into the jaws of death. The 

 mortal struggles of the enormous animal, "making 

 the sea to boil like a pot," his sudden rising with 

 immense impetus to the surface, and the fury and 

 power with which he convulsively lashes the sea with 

 his vast tail, with other circumstances which we can- 

 not particularize, frequently prove the cause of sud- 

 den destruction to the ill-fated mariners. 



The length of the Greenland Whale rarely now 

 exceeds seventy feet, though individuals were for- 

 merly seen of much greater dimensions. It is pro- 

 bable, that, from commercial enterprise, few are 

 suffered to attain adult size, at least in the Northern 

 Seas. The head is about one third of the whole 

 length. The general colour is blackish, white beneath. 

 The affection displayed by the female Cetacea for 

 their young, is in none more observable than in the 

 present species. 



