NOTES ON THE RIGHT AND SPERM WHALES. 3 
Captain Pease has several times seen the killer attack right and 
humpback whales; they strike for the tongue if possible. They 
often jump many feet from the water and fall upon him. Many 
individuals, fifty or more, join in this attack. They tear out large 
pieces from the blubber, food being evidently the object of their at- 
tack. Their great activity makes the whale helpless against them, 
though he will struggle furiously before overborne. They sometimes 
drag down the whale after it has been killed by the whalemen. 
The Captain was quite sure that the chief article of food of the 
sperm whale is squid, as they vomit large quantities of them in 
their death agonies; he thinks that the whales take them by 
swimming with the mouth so wide open that the lower jaw stands 
at nearly right angles to the upper. Squid, he thinks, will grasp 
at the jaw as the whale passes among them and are cut in frag- 
ments by the sudden closure of the jaws. He says that the jaw 
is closed with prodigious force and suddenness so that when out 
of water the noise can be heard for two or three miles, and is 
even noticeable under water. He stoutly maintains that he has 
seen fragments of squid, where the whales had cut them in two, 
exposing the cavity of the body, which was as large over as the 
head of a forty gallon cask. In one case he saw the head of a 
squid which he believes to.have been as large as a sugar hogshead. 
The Captain is convinced that the right whale has a trace of 
hair within the skin. He says that when the skin is fresh, if it be 
scraped with a knife so as to remove the superficial parts, there 
will then be seen a trace of hair in the inner section. This point 
is worthy of attention from those naturalists who have opportuni- 
ties for such work. It is evident that if the whale is the descend- 
ant of some land mammal form it would be likely to preserve a 
trace of the hairy covering. In this connection it is interesting _ 2 
to note that, in the museum at Nantucket, there is a tooth of a ue 
sperm whale with two fangs after the fashion of an ordinary 
mammalian canine. The specimen was taken many years ago, 
but with it is the statement that the other teeth of the whale — 
= were of the same fashion. This clearly looks like a revension: n 
some higher mammalian form of dentition. = ee ey 
Captain Pease thinks that right whales attain very y Geit 
= adult size in three years, there sE about three distinct sizes 
_ found at one time in the sea. . He thinks, however, that they. Li 
evetone bine es ao": longer, the u 
