140 WHALES AND PORPOISES 
THE FAMILY OF BALEEN WHALES 
Balaenidae 
If seen on land, any member of this Family would recall 
Falstaff’s graphic reference to his own fleshy self,—‘“‘A moun- 
tain of mummy!” 
In one respect, a large whale is like an iceberg. When 
seen in the water, only a small fraction of its bulk appears; 
the remainder must be imagined. On the ocean, one sees 
nothing of a whale save a rather flat back and a jet of dense 
vapor rising and curving back into the sea. Startling in- 
deed would be the sight of a whale’s bulk, if it could be seen 
in its entirety. 
The largest and also the swiftest of all whales is the great 
SuLPHUR-Botrom WuHaAtg,' of the Pacific Ocean, found from 
northern California to Central America. So far as we know, 
this is the largest animal that ever lived upon this planet. 
Captain C. M. Scammon, one of the most observant and 
scholarly of all whalers, records the measurements of a speci- 
men taken by him as follows: Total length, 95 feet; length of 
jawbone, 21 feet; girth, 39 feet; length of longest “‘whale- 
bone,” 4 feet; weight of ‘‘whalebone,’ 800 pounds; calcu- 
lated weight of whole whale, 294,000 pounds; barrels of oil 
yielded, 110—not a large quantity. 
The accompanying illustration shows the form of a baleen 
whale, and the peculiar outline of its enormous mouth. 
The whales of this Family live upon minute shrimp-like 
crustaceans, and swimming mollusks (shell-fish) belonging to 
1 Bal-ae-nop’'ter-a sul-fu're-us. 
