WHALES AND MERMAIDS 319 



always does so in the Greenland whale, which is never 

 far from ice. The column of warm moist air thus 

 becomes immediately transformed into a cloud of minute 

 particles of water. Besides this, when they "spout" 

 before quite reaching the surface they may also raise up 

 a jet of water, which their act of expiration displaces 

 and casts upward. 



Although a " right " whale never visits, and probably 

 never did visit, the temperate part of the Atlantic, there 

 is a southern kind — with a shorter head and less baleen 

 — which is found in the temperate seas of both the 

 northern and the southern hemispheres, and presents 

 four varieties, often reckoned as species. One of these 

 varieties inhabited the North Atlantic, and no doubt was 

 often seen, in early days, " spouting" as it traversed the 

 Straits of Dover. Pour or five hundred years ago it was 

 exceedingly common, and in the Middle Ages was keenly 

 pursued by the Basques. From before the Norman 

 Conquest, till the period of the Reformation, oil and 

 whalebone were sent over Europe from Bayonne and 

 San Sebastian, and from other places between those 

 cities. As they grew scarce, the Greenland whale was 

 met with in seeking a north-west passage to India, and 

 has since become the great object of pursuit. Still, the 

 southern kind has visited the Spanish coast so late as 

 1891, while in 1877, one came to southern Italy. It 

 may now also be seen occasionally in New York Harbour, 

 the Delaware River, and the coast of Maryland. 



A whale known as the " humpback," so called because 

 it possesses a dorsal fin (which the right whales do not) of 

 a low hump-like form, ranges the Atlantic from Green- 

 land and Norway, and sometimes makes its appearance 

 on the coasts of the British Isles. Its length is from 

 forty-five to fifty-five feet, and the female is the larger. 



