156 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



pounds for each barrel of oil yielded. Thus, if a ship hails 3,000 barrels 

 of right-whale oil, the probability is that she has also obtained from 

 25,000 to 30,000 pounds of bone. For quite a number of years the price 

 of whalebone was so low that but few whalemen would encumber their 

 vessels with it, the space being of much greater value to fill with oil. 

 When brought home it was worth but about 6 cents per pound. But 

 the price of this commodity has been greatly enhanced. So varied and 

 important are the uses to which it is put that it is extremely sensitive 

 to the fluctuations caused by abundance or scarcity Thus in the latter 

 part of July, 1876, the price quoted was $2.05 per pound. This was 

 already high ; but by the last of October news of disaster to the Arctic 

 fleet sent the price up to $2.50, and by the 1st of December it was 

 quoted at $3.* "Captain Sullivau and Captain Taber, both of New 

 Bedford," says Davis, " speak of bone of the bow-head which measured 

 17 feet." As whales producing such length of bone yield usually about 

 3,000 pounds of it, besides their proportionate supply of oil, it is appar- 

 ent that one such monster is a valuable prize. 



" I should like," says the author of The Nimrod of the Sea, a veteran 

 whaleman, " to convey to the reader some idea of the dimensions of the 

 creature from which such bone is taken. To do so is only possible by 

 entering into the details of the various parts, with their sizes, and by 

 comparison with objects familiar to the mind. The blubber, or blanket, 

 of such a whale would carpet a room 22 yards long and 9 yards wide, 

 averaging half a yard in thickness. * * * Set up a saw-log 2 feet in 

 diameter and 20 feet in length for the ridgepole of the room we propose 

 to build; then raise it in the air 15 feet, and support it with pieces of 



timber 17 feet long, spread, say, 9 feet. This will make a room 9 i'eet 



a . ■ • 



of the principal purposes to which it is put, viz : in the manufacture of whips, para- 

 sols, umhrellas, dresses, corsets, supporters of various kinds, caps, hats, suspenders, 

 neck-stocks, canes, rosettes, cushions to billiard-tables, fishing-rods, divining-rods, 

 bows, busks, fore-arm bows, probangs, tongue-scrapers, pen-holders, paper folders and 

 cutters, graining-couibs for painters, boot-shanks, shoe-horns, brushes, mattresses, &c. 

 * Page 380. Captain Davis, on p. 368, gives another description of the head of the 

 right whale. The mouth, unlike that of his spermaceti relative, has no teetb, but 

 instead is lined with some five or six hundred horny plates (better known as whale- 

 bone) attached to the upper jaw and extending from the throat to the end of the nar- 

 row roof. These plates are parallel, running transversely with the sides, about one- 

 fourth of an inch apart, and terminating on the inner edge in a hairy fringe. It is 

 these fringes that, interlacing, form the sieve or strainer through which the animal 

 forces the watei" retaining within the meshes the minute food gathered as it swims 

 along. The gullet is small ; by some it is said to be too contracted to admit even a 

 herring ; but this statement Captain Davis, for obvious reasons, is not inclined to fully 

 credit. The cavity of the mouth, when the lips are closed, exclusive of the tongue, is 

 equal in capacity to 300 barrels, and the mass of the tongue may occup\ r 250 barrels, 

 leaving about 50 barrels' capacity for a single mouthful of food-charged water. The 

 ship Sarah Sheafe took a bow-head whale in 1857 that produced 100 barrels of oil aud 

 3,000 pounds of bono ; so it will be seen that the old formula of 10 pounds of bone to 

 the barrel of oil does not apply to Arctic whaling. Small amounts of cut bone were sold 

 in February, 1877, as high as $6 per pound. 



