CHAPTER VI. 

 RIGHT WHALE OF THE NORTH-WESTERN COAST. 



Bal^ina Sieboldh? Gray. (Plate xii.) 



This great northern baleen whale, in its principal proportions, resembles the 

 Baloena mysticetus. The latter, however, is destitute of the protuberance called the 

 "bonnet," upon the anterior extremity of its beak - like upper jaw, which is a 

 peculiarly prominent feature of the Balcena 8ieboldii. The color of the Right Whale 

 is generally black, yet there are many individuals with more or less white about the 

 throat and pectorals, and sometimes they are pied all over. Its average adult length 

 may be calculated at sixty feet — it rarely attains to seventy feet — and the two 

 sexes vary but little in size. Its head is very nearly one -third the length of the 

 whole animal, and the upper intermediate portion, or the part between the spiracles 

 and "bonnet," has not that even spherical form, or the smooth and glossy surface 

 present with the Bowhead, but is more or less ridgy crosswise. Both lips and head 

 have wart- like bunches moderately developed, and in some cases the upper surface 

 of the head and fins is infested with parasitical crustaceans. Its tongue yields oil 

 like the mysticetus, but its baleen is shorter and of a coarser and less flexible 

 nature. The average product of oil of the Balcena Sieboldii may be set down at one 

 hundred and thirty barrels ; yet there have been many individuals of this species, 

 captured in early times, that yielded from two hundred to two hundred and eighty 

 barrels. The amount of bone ranges from one thousand to fifteen hundred pounds. 

 In former years, the Right Whales were found on the coast of Oregon, and occa- 

 sionally in large numbers; but their chief resort was upon what is termed the 

 "Kodiak Ground," the limits of which extended from Vancouver's Island north- 

 westward to the Aleutian Chain, and from the coast westward to longitude 150°. 

 In the southern portion of Behring Sea, also upon the coast of Kamschatka, and 

 in the Okhotsk Sea, they congregated in large numbers. The few frequenting the 

 coast of California are supposed to have been merely stragglers from their northern 

 haunts. Some, indeed, have been taken (from February to April) as far south as 



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