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THE FITNESS OF RIGHT WHALES 
VERY age has had its giants; those of to-day 
are the whales. For the Sperm Whale and 
the Right Whales may be fifty feet long, and there 
are others even larger. The two examples just 
mentioned suggest the familiar division of the 
mammalian order Cetacea into the Toothed Whales 
with functional teeth and the Baleen Whales with 
whalebone—two groups which, if they had a com- 
mon ancestry at all, must have diverged very long 
ago, for they are now separated by a multitude 
of structural differences. Among the whalebone 
whales there are two (or perhaps three) called 
“ Right”? simply because they are the right sort for 
whalers to pursue, being more valuable, as regards 
baleen and blubber, than the Finbacks and Hump- 
backs and other kinds which also bear these precious 
products, but in less degree. The recent publica- 
tion of an admirable monograph, Mr. Glover M. 
Allen’s Whalebone Whales of New England (Bos- 
ton, 1916), has prompted us to attempt an appreci- 
ation of the Right Whales, of which the Black 
North Atlantic or Biscay Whale, Balena glacialis, is 
now the leading representative. 
First of all, what an extraordinary bundle of 
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