DUGONGS, MANATEES, WHALES, PORPOISES, DOLPHINS 299 
like many of its group, pe 2S 
teeth in either jaw, is a 
voracious feeder, preying in 
estuaries on salmon and 
flounders, and on more open 
parts of the coast on pilchards 
and mackerel. It is occasion- 
ally a serious nuisance in 
the Mediterranean sardine- 
fisheries, and I have known 
of the fishermen of Collioure, 
in the Gulf of Lyons, appeal- 
ing to the French Govern- 
ment to send a gunboat from 
Toulon that might steam after 
the marauders and frighten BOTTLE-NOSED DOLPHIN 
them away. One of the most From 8 to g feet long, found from the Mediterranean to the North Sea 
remarkable cases of a feeding 
porpoise that I can recall was that of one which played with a conger-eel in a Cornish harbour 
as a cat might play with a mouse, blowing the fish 20 or 30 feet through the air, and 
swimming after it so rapidly as to catch it again almost as it touched the water. 
The DOLPHIN, which is in some seasons as common in the British Channel as the more 
familiar porpoise, is distinguished by its small head and long beak, the lower jaw always 
carrying more teeth than the upper. It feeds on pilchards and mackerel, and, like the porpoises, 
gambols, particularly after an east wind, with its fellows close inshore. There are many other 
marine mammals somewhat loosely bracketed as dolphins. Risso’s DOLPHIN, for instance, a rare 
visitor to our coasts, has a striped skin, and its jaws are without teeth, which distinguish it 
from the common dolphin and most of the others. It cannot therefore feed on fishes, and 
most probably eats squid and cuttle-fish. The BOTTLE-NOSED DOLPHIN, a species occurring in 
the greatest numbers on the Atlantic coast of North America, is regularly hunted for its oil. 
HEAVYSIDE’S DOLPHIN, which hails from South African waters, is a smaller kind, chiefly remarkable 
for the curious distribution of black and white on its back and sides. 
A word must, in conclusion, be said on the economic value of the whales. Fortunately, as 
they are getting rarer, substitutes for their once invaluable products are being from time to time 
discovered, and much of the regret at their extermination by wasteful slaughter is sentimental 
and not economic. For whalebone it is not probable that a perfect substitute will ever be 
found. It therefore maintains a high price, though the former highest market value of over 
$10,000 per ton has fallen to something nearer the half. The sperm-oil from the sperm-whale, 
and the train oil from that 
of the right-whales, the sper- 
maceti out of the cachalot’s 
forehead and the ambergris 
secreted in its stomach, are 
the other valuable products. 
Ambergris is a greyish, fatty 
secretion, caused by the irri- 
| tation set up in the whale’s in- 
| side by the undigested beaks 
WEL. We Zz ada iL |) Oof:scuttle-fish. Its market 
Photo by A. 8. Rudiand & Sons price is about $25 per ounce. 
HEAVYSIDE’S DOLPHIN A lump of 240 Ibs. sold for 
A imall, peoabierlpicleured species from the Cape nearly $100,000. 
Lif 
Photo by A, S. Rudland & Sons 
