18 THE WHALES AND PORPOISES. 



occasionally take them about Cape Flattery, considering their fat and flesh luxurious food. Their 

 jaws, studded with strong conical teeth, are often sold in our curiosity shons. 



7, THE SPERM WHALE PORPOISE. 



Capture of two individuals in New England. — A specimen twenty-five feet long of this 

 animal, Hy^emodon Mdens Owen, was found on the beach at North Dennis, Mass., January 29, 

 1869; another was obtained in 1860 or 1867 at Tiverton Stone Bridge, R. I. I am indebted to Mr. 

 J. n. Blake for an outline of this cetacean, and the following notes, taken by him at the time, he 

 having visited Dennis and obtained the skeleton for the Museum of Comparative Zoology : "When 

 found," he writes, "the blood was still warm. It was twenty-five feet long, six feet high, and the 

 tail was six feet across. The flippers were twenty-nine inches long, the snout twenty inches. The 

 hump on the back was three or four inches high, thick at the base and narrowing toward the 

 tip. The blubber was two and a half to four inches thick, and sold for $175. Squid-beaks enough 

 to fill two waiter-buckets were taken from the stomach." 



8. THE WHITE WHALE. 



Distribution. — The White Whale, Delphinapterus catodon (Linn.) Gill, first described in 1671 

 in Martens' " Voyage to Spitzbergen," resembles in form the other members of the Dolphin family, 

 slender and graceful, with a small head and powerful tail. The adult, which attains a length of 

 fifteen or sixteen feet, is creamy white in color ; the young, five or six feet long when newly born, 

 is lead-colored, passing through a period of mottled coloration before assuming the mature appear- 

 ance. The species is abundant in the North Atlantic, North Pacific, and Arctic Oceans. Stragglers 

 have been seen in the Frith of Forth, latitude 56°, while on the American coast several have been 

 taken within the past decade on the north shore of Cape Cod. They are slightly abundant in New 

 England waters, but in the Saint Lawrence Eiver and on the coast of Labrador are plentiful, and 

 the object of a profitable fishery. They abound in the Bering and Okhotsk Seas, and ascend the 

 Yukon Eiver, Alaska, to a distance of 700 miles. The names in use are Beluga and Whiteflsh 

 among whalers, Porpoise, Dauphin Blanc, Marsuin or Marsoon in Canada, and Keela Luak with the 

 Greenland Eskimos. 



Habits. — The species is familiar to many from having been recently exhibited in several aqua- 

 riums, and also by traveling showmen. When in captivity they feed on living eels, of which a grown 

 individual consumes two or three bushels daily. They are also known to subsist on bottom fish, 

 like flounders and halibut, on cod, haddock, and salmon, squids and prawns. They are, in their 

 turn, the food of larger whales, such as the killer or orca. They swim in small schools, entering 

 shallow sounds and rapid rivers in swift pursuit of their food. They spout inconspicuously, and 

 are not easily distinguished wheu swimming. 



The few which have been taken recently along our Atlantic coast have been sold to aquariums 

 or to natural history museums, yielding good prices to their captors. The fishery in the river 

 Saint Lawrence is of considerable importance. 



Historical note.— The first allusion to the occurrence of this cetacean in our waters was 

 printed by Josslyn in 1675, in his "Account of Two Voyages to New England": "The Sea-hare is 

 as big as Grampus or Herrin-hog, and as white as a sheet; There hath been of them in Black-point 

 Harbour, & some way up the river, but we could never take any of them, several have shot sluggs 

 at them, but lost their labour." 



Captures in Massachusetts.— "About the year 1857," writes Captain Atwood, " a species of 

 cetacean twelve or fourteen feet long was killed in Provincetown Harbor, oft" Long Point, which no 



