THE OCEAN MAMMALS 355 



The jaw-bone may be sixteen to eighteen feet long. It took 

 four of us a whole afternoon, with axes and swords mounted 

 on pike handles, to cut out one bone and carry it to our 

 steamer. One had to walk almost in the footsteps of Jonah 

 to get at the articulation, so far back is it in the body. 

 Yet the gullet of this whale, where full-grown, is only a few 

 inches in diameter. In reality, his mouth is a vast trap 

 for food, the more of which is caught the larger the mouth is 

 developed. Their food is very simple, being almost entirely 

 small crustaceans of the shrimp variety which they sieve 

 out of the deep water as they swim along. Occasionally 

 they swallow a caplin or herring, which gets in the way. 

 No whale is ever killed in a starved condition, not even a 

 blind one, of which several have been captured. 



The finback is the commonest whale on the coast. He 

 runs only to about sixty-five feet in length, and in proportion 

 gives less oil than the sulphur-bottom. The humpback is, 

 at times, scarcely worth catching, giving very little oil. 

 He may be seventy to seventy-five feet long, and has bone 

 up to three feet in length. When freshly killed, the young 

 humpback affords excellent food for man. Indeed, were 

 it not for the prejudice against them, these " mountains of 

 meat" would be considered a most Desirable food-supply. 

 A few of us on the coast have used it, fresh, salted, and 

 tinned. It is too hard in salt, but, tinned, is really good 

 meat, with not enough characteristic qualities for the or- 

 dinary man to tell it from tinned beef. The tinning, as an 

 industry, seems to be abandoned, but in a country where 

 vegetables are absent, cattle impossible, and our wild meat 

 supplies diminishing with the years, the immense amount 

 of nourishing material would seem a most desirable ad- 



