32 GILPIN PORPOISES AND DOLPHINS OF NOVA SCOTIA. 



the most dexterous balancing, the nicest handling, and the most 

 perfect accord betwixt man and man. Xature teaches her forest 

 child some lessons she withholds from his civilized conqueror. As 

 flies the fish hawk with his prey straight to his nest, so usually the 

 red man brings to camp his victim, but they are not unknown 

 sometimes to pile a half dozen in their canoes in one hunt. 

 " Malti Pictou," said his paddle man to me, " once took thirteen 

 in one canoe, he say, he then had enough — suppose where me sit 

 just so much above water," measuring off upon his greasy finger 

 about half an inch, to show me the canoe was loaded to gunwale ; 

 " Basin all over glass," he added to explain the perfect calm. The 

 fish when brought to shore is flenched like a seal, and the blubber 

 about two-thirds of an inch thick attached to the skin, is cut into 

 small pieces by the women and children and thrown into an iron 

 pot filled with boiling water. Sitting around this, they collect the 

 oil as it rises to the surface. In this rude way some two or three 

 gallons may be obtained from one fish. Some Indians have had 

 fifty or sixty fall to their own gun, and perhaps from three or 

 four thousand gallons may be the yearly produce of the South 

 shore of the Bay of Fundy. The oil is valuable, gradually increas- 

 ing in price, and if the Indians could place it properly in the 

 American market, it would net them a good return. 



In naming this species I have, following Bell, Camper and 

 Jackson, considered "communis" and " tuberculifera " as identical. 

 Gray on the other hand makes two species, differing by the one 

 having short spines on the anterior of dorsal fin, and in its oste- 

 ology. In the American species these spines are so small that they 

 may be overlooked, but having taken about ten specimens of both 

 sexes at the water's edge, and finding each to have spines, I may say 

 it is the exception for them to have none. In counting the ribs of 

 a young one taken in the Bay of Fundy, I found fourteen pairs and 

 eight attached to the sternum. As Gray makes thirteen pairs only 

 and seven attached to the sternum, I recounted them and caused 

 others to count them for me, but with the same result. The four- 

 teenth pair were so small that they might easily have been 

 overlooked. 



