THE BALEEN WHALES 
147 
THE FAMILY OF BALEEN WHALES. 
Balenidae. 
If seen on land, any member of this Family 
would recall Falstaff’s graphic reference to his 
own fleshy self, — “A mountain of mummy!” 
In one respect, a large whale is like an iceberg. 
When seen in the water, only a small fraction of 
its bulk appears, and the remainder must be 
imagined. On the ocean, one sees nothing of a 
whale save a rather flat back, and a jet of dense 
vapor rising and curving back into the sea. 
Startling indeed would be the sight of a whale’s 
bulk, if it could be seen in its entirety. 
The largest and also the swiftest of all whales 
is the great Sulphur-Bottom Whale , 1 of the 
Pacific Ocean, found from northern California 
to Central America. So far as we know, this is 
the largest animal that ever lived upon this 
planet. Captain C. M. Scammon, one of the 
most observant and scholarly of all whalers, 
records the measurements of a specimen taken 
by him as follows: Total length, 95 feet; length 
of jawbone, 21 feet; girth, 39 feet; length of 
longest “whalebone,” 4 feet; weight of “whale- 
bone,” 800 pounds; calculated weight of whole 
whale, 294,000 pounds; barrels of oil yielded, 
110 — not a large quantity. 
The accompanying illustration shows the 
form of a baleen whale, and the peculiar outline 
of its enormous mouth. The whales of this Fam- 
ily live upon minute shrimp-like crustaceans, 
and swimming mollusks (shell-fish) belonging 
to the group known as pteropods (ter'o-pods) 
which float in myriads on or near the surface of 
the sea. To enable the sea-monster to feed upon 
these very small organisms, and secure them in 
a wholesale way, the roof of the mouth is pro- 
vided with two great masses of thin, horny plates 
set edgewise on each side, and very close together. 
The lower edges of these plates (of “whale- 
bone ”) are frayed out into a mass of what looks 
like coarse, bristly hair, and these frayed edges 
unite into a web of filaments as long and as wide 
as the whole inside of the mouth. 
In feeding, the whale swims through a mass 
of floating pteropods, with its mouth open ; and 
the fringe of the baleen, hanging down upon the 
sides of the lower jaw, forms a perfect strainer 
for catching even the smallest creatures afloat. 
1 Bal-ae-nop'ter-a sul-fu're-us 
The pteropods gather in a mass on the tongue, 
and presently are swallowed. When the mouth 
is shut, the plates of baleen fold in diagonally. 
Captain David Gray has stated that some- 
times the whale finds its food under water, at 
a depth of from sixty to ninety feet. In gather- 
ing it the animal dives, holds its breath like any 
air-breathing animal, and after an interval re- 
appears at the surface to breathe, swallow the 
food collected, and rest before diving again. 
When whales are feeding in this manner, it is 
comparatively easy for whalers to approach them 
within striking distance, and harpoon them. 
One of the most astonishing statements re- 
corded of this animal is that sometimes when 
harpooned, and sometimes in sport, as well, it 
leaps out of the water, for practically its entire 
length! Captain Scammon states that a pair 
of Sulphur-Bottom Whales have been known 
to float side by side at the surface of the water, 
BOW-HEAD WHALE. 
Balaena mysticetus. 
and caress each other by striking each other’s 
bodies with their flippers, “the sound made by 
these gigantic love-pats being audible for miles.” 
The young of a whale is called a “calf,” and 
usually the mother is very solicitous for the wel- 
fare of her offspring. She suckles it until it is 
able to seek other food than her milk. 
The Bow-Head Whale, also called Green- 
land, and Polar Whale , 2 of the polar seas 
around the north pole, is known by the immense 
size of its head and the semicircular arch of its 
jaws. Its individual plates of baleen are some- 
times 10 to 12 feet in length. This material is 
now scraped very fine, and mixed with the silk 
fibre of dress silks, to make the cloth rustle when 
worn, and also give it stiffness. It is now of such 
high value commercially that the baleen whales 
are being pursued as far north as vessels can go. 
When a vessel is having a run of luck, and strik- 
ing Bow-Head Whales frequently, the oil is some- 
2 Bal-ae'na mys-ti-ce'tus. 
