148 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE.—1912. 
products of economic importance obtained from these animals. A 
modern whaling station obtains 
(a) Oil. 
(b) Whalebone. 
a aia ‘food) | (Manure). 
(ec) Glue. 
Besides these there are two subsidiary products from the Sperm whale 
(Physeter macrocephalus, L.}—viz., ambergris and sperm teeth. The 
latter (sperm teeth) are now sold as such, and Captain Bruun informed 
me that he had found a market for them in 1911 for the first time. 
There does not seem to be any reason why they should not be used for 
manufacturing articles in the same way as ordinary bones and ivory. 
The trunk bones are far too porous and contain large quantities of 
oil. 
(a) Oil.—This is still the most important product. To extract it. 
every part of the animal, with the exception of the whalebone and 
sperm teeth, is boiled for an average of about twenty-four hours. 
When a whale is towed into the station it is anchored to a buoy until 
the men at the factory are ready to deal with it. When all is ready, 
the animal, perhaps by this time enormously distended by the internal 
generation of gases, is brought to the bottom of the flensing-slip, 
a large chain is attached round the tail, connected to a steel-wire rope, 
and the whale is slowly hauled up the inclined plane by a powerful 
steam winch. ‘The animal is drawn up rather on its side, but some- 
times nearly on its back. ‘This is due to the fact that it floats in this 
position while in the water, the gases accumulating in the body cavity 
and distending the belly. The flensing-plane has to be very strongly 
supported by piles on account of the great weight of the whales. A 
60-foot whale weighs something like 70 or 80 tons. 
The next process is to strip off the blubber ‘ blanket.’ This is 
performed by two Scandinavians called ‘ blubber-flensers.’ The work 
of these men consists entirely in stripping off the blubber and taking 
out the baleen. The knives used are of a special kind (fig. 1). The 
blubber is cut through along the mid-dorsal and mid-ventral lines of the 
animal, and two cuts are also made along each side. Thus there are 
marked out the three strips which are taken off from each side of the 
whale. A chain fastened to a steel-wire rope is attached to the head 
end of each of these strips, and the blubber taken off from the head end 
towards the tail by the help of a steam winch, the flensers using their 
knives to ensure the strips coming off cleanly, with as little meat as 
possible. 
The blubber is then cut up into manageable blocks by some of the 
unskilled local workers, and finally the blocks are fed info a arrange- 
ment of a revolving circular knife and an elevator fixed on the flensing- 
slip. The blubber is thus transferred in fairly small pieces into the 
boilers s soon as removed from the whale. After the blubber has 
been entirely removed, another Scandinavian, called the ‘ meat-flenser,’ 
cuts off the head, which is chopped up separately. The carcase, from 
which the viscera have been removed, is then handed over to this 
