194 WHALES AND WHALE FISHERIES xiv 



water from the small marine molluscs, crustaceans, or fish 

 upon which the whales subsist. In feeding they fill the 

 immense mouth with water containing shoals of these small 

 creatures, and then on their closing the jaws and raising the 

 tongue, so as to diminish the cavity of the mouth, the water 

 streams out through the narrow intervals between the hairy 

 fringe of the whalebone blades, and escapes through the lips, 

 leaving the living prey to be swallowed. In the different 

 kinds of whales, which I shall now speak of, there are great 

 differences in the character of the baleen. In the Californian 

 grey whale (Rachianecles glaucus), an animal which attains a 

 length of from 30 to 40 feet, the baleen blades are fewer than 

 two hundred on each side, and far apart, very short (the 

 longest being from 14 to 16 inches in length), coarse, and 

 inelastic, light brown or nearly white in colour. From this 

 there is a gradual transition, through the rorquals or finners, 

 the humpbacks, the southern right whales, up to the Greenland 

 whale, which exhibits this structure in its greatest perfection, 

 both for the purposes it serves in the animal economy, and for 

 the uses to which it has been applied by man. 



All the known whalebone whales may be divided into five 

 different groups or genera, as they are called by naturalists, 

 the first of which (genus Balcena) have long been distinguished 

 by practical whalers as " right whales," as they are, compared 

 to all the others, the right whales to catch, being of far 

 the greater commercial value. They are readily distin- 

 guished externally by the perfectly smooth back, without any 

 trace of a dorsal fin, and by the skin of the throat and 

 chest being also smooth, whereas in most of the other forms this 

 region presents a number of deep longitudinal plaits or furrows. 

 Of the right whales there are two perfectly distinct forms, 

 though whether each of these represents a single species, or 

 can be subdivided into several, is still a matter of uncertainty, 

 and for our present purpose of little importance, as if minute 

 investigation can prove that they are separable, they are most 

 closely allied and perfectly similar to all ordinary observation. 

 The two forms, which I shall speak of as species or kinds, are 

 the Greenland or rather Arctic right whale (Balcena mysticetus) 

 and the southern right whale (Balcena australis). 



