286 Bulletin American Museum of Natural History. [Vol. XXIV, 



weighs 3000 Ib. twenty in the breadth of their tails and produces 180 barrels 

 of oil." He afterwards, in his enumeration of the species, includes "The 

 right whale, or seven feet bone, common on the coasts of this country, about 

 sixty feet long" (op. cit., pp. 167, 169). 



It thus appears that the Right Whale of the eastern coast of the United 

 States was regarded by whalers as not only distinct specifically from the 

 Greenland Whale, but also as identical with the whale of the North Cape. 

 It seems, indeed, to have been generally known among New England 

 whalers, down to the last part of the nineteenth century, as the "North- 

 caper," as I have learned from Provincetown whalers formerly engaged in 

 the pursuit of whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Their " North- caper " 

 (also called "Black Whale") was not only smaller, yielding less oil and 

 much shorter bone, but had a "bonnet" infested with parasitic cirripeds, 

 and was migratory, passing north in spring and south in autumn. 



Eschricht and Reinhardt, 1 in speaking of the species now under con- 

 sideration, present the following summary of the results of their investi- 

 gation of its early history: "Much as we could wish, on reviewing the 

 above-mentioned statements derived from very different authors, that the 

 historical evidence about the whale mentioned by the name of 'Sletbag/ 

 'Sarde/ or 'Nordkaper/ had contained a more complete description of it, 

 yet it must be admitted that they are sufficient to prove our former asser- 

 tion, that the ancient Icelanders as well as the whalers of different nations 

 really used to distinguish between this whale and the Greenland whale, 

 and that this distinction was in all respects well founded. As certain 

 characteristics of the 'Sletbag/ we are already enabled to point out the 

 following : 



"1. That it was much more active than the Greenland w^hale, much 

 quicker, and more violent in its movements, and accordingly both more 

 difficult and more dangerous to catch. 



"2. That it was smaller (it being, however, impossible to give an exact 

 statement of its length), and had much less blubber. 



"3. That its head was shorter, and that its whale-bone was, compara- 

 tively speaking, much thicker, but scarcely more than half as long as that 

 of the Greenland whale, being however still much longer than that of even 

 the very largest fin-whale, although the 'Sletbag' itself probably scarcely 

 attained to half the length of the last-named. 



"4. That it was regularly infested with a cirriped belonging to the 

 genus Coronula, and that it belonged to the temperate North Atlantic as 

 exclusively as the Greenland whale belonged to the icy Polar sea, so that it 



1 The extracts here following are from the English translation of their 'Om Nordhvalen' 

 <1861) published by the Ray Society in 1866, in ' Recent Memoirs on the Cetacea,' pp. 39-41. 



