SHORE-WHALING: A WORLD INDUSTRY 



439 



SKULL OF A BLUL WHALE SENT TO THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OE NATURAL HISTORY 



FROM JAPAN 



there is little doubt but that most large 

 whales can remain under water a con- 

 siderably longer time. 



Both humpbacks and finbacks, when 

 two or more individuals are together, 

 will frequently swim side by side so 

 closely as to almost touch each other, 

 leaving the surface and reappearing 

 again at exactly the same instant. Also 

 a school, when separated by perhaps 

 many hundred yards, will disappear as 

 though at a given signal, double under 

 water, and rise again a mile away, all 

 blowing at the same time. How they 

 communicate with each other — for it 

 seems that they must do so — is a mys- 

 tery for which I cannot even suggest an 

 explanation. 



THE GIANT SPERM WHALE 



No mammal which inhabits the sea is 

 more extraordinary and grotesque in 

 appearance than is the heavy-bodied, 

 square-nosed sperm whale, and I suppose 

 no mammal could furnish a more inter- 

 esting study to the naturalist. At very 

 few of the shore stations are sperms 

 taken, but in the north of Japan, during 

 August and September, they are killed 

 in numbers (see pp. 434, 436, and 438). 



Instead of having plates of baleen, this 

 whale carries a row of 20 to 25 heavy 

 teeth on each side of the lower jaw. 

 These fit into sockets in the roof of the 

 mouth and assist in holding the giant 

 squid and cuttle-fish on which the enor- 

 mous animal feeds. Since the squid 



