188 MARINE MAMMALS OF THE NORTH-WESTERN COAST. 



ships have been capsized by it" (the jet of water). "It is also believed that the 

 whale, like the porpoise and the dolphin, jumps entirely out of the water in order 

 to take breath, and even that it has been heard blowing from a great distance off. 

 This fish has neither hair nor scales, but is covered with smooth, hard, bla<!k, and 

 thick skin, or hide, under which there is a layer of fat fully a foot in thickness, 

 and this is what is sold during Lent. The tongue is marvelously large, and excel- 

 lent eating ; and it is customary to salt and preserve it, as is also done with all 

 the rest of the flesh of this fish. And that which is called whalebone (cosfe de 

 hakne — literally, whale's ribs), Avith which ladies nowadays make their corsets 

 and stiffen out their dresses, and which the beadles of some churches caiTy as 

 wands — these are certain pieces cut off and drawn out from that which serves as 

 eye -lids for the whale, and which covers his eyes, and which is furnished at its 

 extremity with a kind of long, stiff hair. This is what the Latins call the pretentures, 

 and which they say enables the animal to direct his course through the sea. As 

 far as the other exterior and interior parts of the whale are concerned, they clearly 

 resemble those of the sea -hog, and, making allowance for size, those of the por- 

 poise and dolphin." 



Although this writer in some points gives us a very erroneous account of the 

 whalebone whale, yet in a general view it is an intelligible description of the 

 animal ; and it also establishes the fact that the animal's baleen, fat, and flesh were 

 utilized at that period, the former being used as at the present day to distort the 

 figures of women in their dress, and the latter was esteemed as luxurious food. 

 The author's figure of the balaena is almost entirely in error, yet it is hardly more 

 so than the representations of the same animal which may be found in popular 

 works of the present century. We continue to quote from M'Culloch : 



"This branch of industry among the Bascjues and Biscayans ceased long since, 

 and from the same cause that has occasioned the cessation of the whale-fishery in 

 many other places — the want of fish. Whether it was that the whales, from a 

 sense of the dangers to which they exposed themselves in coming southward, no 

 longer left the icy sea, or that the breed had been nearly destroyed, certain it is 

 that they gradually became less numerous in the Bay of Biscay, and at length 

 ceased almost entirely to frequent that sea; and the fishers being obliged to 

 pursue their prey upon the banks of Newfoundland and the coasts of Iceland, the 

 French fishery rapidly fell off. The voyages of the Dutch and English to the 

 Northern Ocean, in order, if possible, to discover a passage through it to India, 

 though they failed of their main object, laid open the haunts of the whale. The 

 companions of Barentz, who discovered Spitzbergen in 1596, and of Hudson, who 



