ORDEE OF CETACEA. 59 



their share of their feast. The bones, rolled about and heaped up 

 in the creeks, are then carried away by the ships. 



Before being stored in the hold of the ship as cargo to be 

 taken home, the parts stripped off the Whale have to undergo 

 various preparations. 



Each piece of blubber is divided, by a machine, into slices of 

 one centimetre in thickness ; then they proceed to the melting 

 down, which has for its object to separate the oil from this 

 enormous greasy rind. 



The operation of melting is effected on the deck of the ship 

 by means of a furnace, of which the fire is kept up with 

 scratchinr/s, that is to say, the fragments of cellular tissue which 

 float on the surface of the oil when the blubber is melted. An 

 ordinary Whale yields a quantity of these, svifficient not only for 

 melting down its own blubber, but also sufficient for melting 

 down a part of the blubber of another Whale. The base of the 

 furnace does not rest directly on the deck ; it is separated from 

 it by a free space, in which cold water is always circulating, 

 which I'educes the adjacent parts of the deck of the shij) to a 

 temperature below 100". Without this precaution, there would 

 be a constant risk of fire. The quantity of oil supplied by a 

 single Right Whale may be as much as from twenty-five to thirty 

 hectolitres. The operations, of which we have given a raj^id 

 sketch, make a whale-ship very unsavoury quarters. To give an 

 idea of it, we will again borrow a few lines from the work of Dr. 

 Thiercelin : — 



" I remember," says the author, " one evening in December, 

 1838, I was on board the ViUe-de-Bordeaux. We had kiUed four 

 Whales that day. We had been able to turn one of our four 

 victims over ; the second lay along the ship to starboard ; and the 

 two others were riding on the waves, fastened to the ship by cables. 

 The deck, riinning with oil, was encumbered with emjjty barrels, 

 with whalebone, and flippers partly stripped of their fat. The 

 blubber-room was crammed full, and two smoky lamps showed 

 two or three novices, all covered with grease, employed in cutting 

 up the small pieces. What a charnel-house is this room ! " * 



The Eorquals have the head smaller than in the Right Whales, 

 measuring about one-fourth of the entire length of the animal, a 



* Journal d'un Bakinier, tome i. 



