12 NATURAL HISTORY OF AQUATIC ANIMALS. 



Atlantic. Another species is the Rlackfish of the Eastern Pacific., G. Scymnionil Co) e, once 

 abundant, according to Scammon, on the coast of Lower California, but now usually found off 

 Guatemala, Ecuador, and Peru, though occasionally ranging to high northern and southern 

 latitudes. 



SIZE. The ordinary length of the New England Blackfish is fifteen to eighteen feet, though 

 they sometimes grow larger. The largest ever seen by Capt. Caleb Cook, a veteran oil maker of 

 Cape Cod, measured twenty-five feet and yielded five barrels of oil. The weight of a fifteen foot 

 Rlackfish is estimated at 800 to 1,000 pounds. 



MOVKMENTS. They swim in large schools, sometimes several hundred together. They make 

 little commotion at the surface of the water as they swim, not rolling like their little kindred, the 

 Porpoises, but come up often to spout, the jet of spray rising three or four feet, and emitted with a 

 low, deep, snorting sound. When at the surface they often remain in sight several minutes. Usu- 

 ally their movements are sluggish, though at times energetic enough, as can testify any one who has 

 seen a school of them driven up on the beach. They feed upon schooling fish, menhaden, mackerel, 

 herring, and squids. Rlackfish are in great terror of the Killer Whales, which drive them about 

 mercilessly. In September, 1878, 1 saw a school of them which had for some days been hovering 

 around the entrance to Provincetown Harbor fleeing tumultuously before two large whales with 

 high back-fins. 



REPRODUCTION. They breed in summer about Cape Cod. Out of one hundred and nineteen 

 driven ashore at Dennis in August, 1875, fully eighty were females with young, or recently born 

 calves of seven or eight feet. A foetus cut from a gravid Rlackfish of eighteen feet was nearly 

 seven feet long. All the females were yielding milk, and as the fishermen cut into their sides the 

 warm fluid poured out in copious streams. 



Watson records, in the case of a female on the Rritish coast suckling its young, that the calf 

 was four feet six inches long in December and seven feet in January. Scammon thinks that in the 

 Pacific they breed at all seasons. He found mothers with young calves off the Gulf of Dulce, 

 Guatemala, in February, 1853. 



STRANDING- OF THE RLACKFISH SCHOOLS. As will be told more in detail in another chapter, 

 hundreds, and often thousands, of them are stranded yearly on the shores of Cape Cod. They 

 occasionally run ashore at Nantucket, and instances have occurred of their being driven in at Cape 

 Rreton. Although there have been similar instances in Europe, especially at the Orkneys, I can- 

 not learn that such occurrences are sufficiently common anywhere else to be counted on by the 

 people as a regular source of income. A Cape Cod fisherman occasionally wakes up in the morning 

 to find two or three of these animals stranded in his back yard. "A pretty windfall," remarked 

 one of them to me. Cape Cod, projecting far out to sea, with its sloping, unbroken sandy shores, 

 seems like a trap or weir naturally adapted for their capture, and the Indians took advantage of 

 this circumstance long before the European settlement. The Pilgrims, in 1G20, found Indians on 

 the shore at Wellfleet cutting up a Grampus, and in the shell-heaps of the surrounding region are 

 yet to be found many evidences of their use of the smaller cetaceans for food. It is doubtful whether 

 the Rlackfish, stupid as they seem, would ever run ashore if not frightened by such enemies as the 

 Killer. In fact a large share of those which become stranded are purposely driven up out of shoal 

 water, into which they have strayed, by men in boats. 



Little can be said about the time when they are most abundant. It seems to depend on the 

 supply of suitable food. Captain Cook believes that they feed mostly or entirely upon squids, 

 and if this be the case their appearance must be regulated by the abundance of those animals. 

 They are never seen earlier than June or later than December. Thirty years ago they were most 



