SHORE-WHALING: A WORLD INDUSTRY 



415 



A FINBACK WHALE: VANCOUV 



the body from being absorbed by the 

 water in the one case, and the air in the 

 other. On the great bowhead, or Green- 

 land right whale, which lives in the in- 

 tensely cold waters of the Arctic Ocean, 

 the blubber is 12 or 14 inches thick in 

 some places (see pages 427, 435, 438). 



When the "blanket pieces," as the 

 blubber strips are called, were torn from 

 the carcass, they were cut into large 

 oblong blocks and fed into a slicing ma- 

 chine, chipped to small bits, carried up- 

 ward and dumped into enormous vats, to 

 be boiled or "tried out' 1 for oil. 



The carcass had meanwhile been split 

 open by chopping through the ribs of the 

 upper side, a heavy hook was attached 

 to the tongue bones at the throat, and the 

 entire mass of heart, lungs, liver, and 

 intestines drawn out at once. The body 

 was then hauled to the ''carcass plat- 

 form," at right angles to the "flensing 



ER (SEE pages 428 and 437) 



slip," the flesh torn from the bones by 

 the aid of the winch, and the skeleton 

 disarticulated. 



Both flesh and bones were piled sepa- 

 rately into great open vats which bor- 

 dered the carcass platform, and boiled 

 to extract the oil. The flesh was then 

 artificially dried and sifted, thus being 

 converted into a very fine guano, and the 

 bones pulverized to form "bone meal," 

 also a fertilizer. Even the blood, of 

 which there are several tons in a large 

 whale, was carefully drained from the 

 slip into troughs, boiled, dried, and made 

 into guano. Finally, the water in which 

 the blubber had been tried out was con- 

 verted into glue. 



The baleen, or whalebone, which alone 

 remained to be disposed of, was thrown 

 aside, to be cleaned and dried as oppor- 

 tunity offered. The baleen of all the 

 rorquals is short, coarse, and stiff, and 



