310 THE ANIMALS OF THE ANTARCTIC 



crustaceans, consuming not only the species just named, but likewise the much 

 smaller kinds known as Calanus finmarchichus and Temora longicomis. 



To capture such racers with the old-fashioned hand-harpoon was difficult 

 and unprofitable, especially since, if struck, they are quite likely to turn on their 

 pursuers and smash the boats. Moreover, as their whalebone is of very little value 

 and their yield of blubber relatively poor, rorquals were for the most part left 

 alone in the old days of whaling, and they accordingly increased in numbers, and 

 swarmed in almost every sea except the Arctic. A day of reckoning was, however, 

 to come, and at the present time the destruction of rorquals is so great and so 

 rapid that fears of their extermination from some seas have been entertained. 

 The doom of the rorqual is due to the Norseman, Sven Foyle, who early in the 

 second half of last century invented the exploding and expanding harpoon, the 

 latest form of which is a really terrible weapon. 



The modern harpoon weighs about one hundredweight, and is so made that 

 its iron shank fits the bore of the gun from which it is fired ; the latter being 

 mounted in the bow of the whaling vessel. Through the length of the shank runs 

 a slot like the eye of a huge needle, in which travels an iron ring, carrying the 

 line. The shank is hidden in the gun as far up as the front end of the slot ; and 

 just in front of this are four iron barbs attached by hinges to the shaft and held 

 fast by a cord round their tips. After being fired, this cord is stripped off by the 

 impact against the whale, when the four barbs spread out in the body of the latter 

 directly the line becomes taut. A pointed cone is screwed on to the shaft in front 

 of the barbs. This cone, which is of cast-iron and measures 14 inches in length, 

 with a basal diameter of 3 inches, weighs about a dozen pounds and carries 

 a charge and friction-fuse. This fuse is connected to a wire which, after 

 passing through a hole in the nozzle of the shaft, is made fast to the cord 

 holding the barbs. When the cord is snapped by the weapon striking the 

 whale's flank, the fuse is fired and the bomb, buried deep in the monster's body, 

 explodes. 



With such a weapon a rorqual can be hit and killed at 30 or 40 yards' 

 distance ; and within five minutes of firing, the carcase will be hauled up alongside 

 the whaler. In the old days of Greenland whaling the carcase was stripped of its 

 blubber and whalebone at sea and cast adrift ; but the Norwegians utilise practi- 

 cally the entire whale, which after being rendered buoyant by the injection of 

 steam, is towed to the whaling-station, where it is hauled, tail-forwards, despite its 

 weight of from 35 to 70 tons, by machinery up an inclined stepway to the flensing 

 platform. After all the oil has been extracted from the flesh and bones by high- 

 pressure steam in the metal cylinders in which they are treated, the solid residue 

 is dried and ground up and sold as a fertiliser under the name of whale-guano. 

 The whalebone of the larger rorquals realises from £40 to £50 per ton, but that of 

 the smaller kinds is worthless. 



Humpbacks, as represented by the widely spread Megaptera hoops, which also 

 visits the Antarctic in great numbers, are shorter and more heavily built cetaceans 

 than rorquals, although perhaps, on account of the much greater length of their 

 flippers, they may be nearly as rapid swimmers. In any case, they are just as 

 difficult to catch ; and they do not appear to have been regularly hunted previous 



