142 WHALES AND PORPOISES 
Bottom Whales have been known to float side by side at the 
surface of the water, and caress each other by striking each 
other’s bodies with their flippers, “‘the sound made by these 
gigantic love-pats being audible for miles.”’ 
The young of a whale is called a “calf,” and usually the 
mother is very solicitous for the welfare of her offspring. 
She suckles it until it is able to seek other food than her milk. 
Tue Bow-Heap WuHatez, also called GREENLAND, and 
Porar WuHALE,! of the north polar seas, is known by the im- 
mense size of its head and the semicircular arch of its jaws. 
Its individual plates of baleen are sometimes 10 to 12 feet in 
length. This material is now scraped very fine, and mixed 
with the silk fibre of dress silks in order to make the cloth 
rustle when worn, and also to give it stiffness. It is now of 
such high value commercially that the baleen whales are 
being pursued as far north as vessels can go. When a vessel 
is having a run of luck and is striking Bow-Head Whales fre- 
quently, the oil is sometimes completely ignored, and the 
quest settles down to a hunt for whalebone alone. 
Whale oil is no longer the valuable commodity it was 
fifty and more years ago, but the hunt for baleen will ulti- 
mately exterminate all the whales of this Family. The Bow- 
Head Whale is of medium size, rarely attaining 65 feet, and 
usually runs under 50; yet it is uncommonly rich, both in 
baleen and oil. A large whale of this species is said to yield 
275 barrels of oil, and 3,500 pounds of whalebone. 
On the coast of Newfoundland there are now five whaling 
stations which during the summer season do a thriving busi- 
1 Bal-ae’na mys-ti-ce’tus. 
