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BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 
now been examined by various observers, and in every case (apart from fish) they 
have been packed with euphausiids and with euphausiids alone. Thus G. M. Allen 
(1916, p. 200) writes that “on the Newfoundland coast stomachs of several finbacks 
which I examined contained enormous quantities of the small shrimplike schizopod 
Thysanoessa inermis.” Lillie (1910), too, found the stomach contents of several 
finbacks taken off Ireland in July and August to consist altogether of euphausiids 
(in this case Meganjmtiphanes) and of fish; and in more than 150 finbacks killed at 
the Belmullet whaling station on the west coast of Ireland, Burfield (1913) and 
Hamilton (1915 and 1916) found nothing but immense numbers of these same 
pelagic shrimps (Meganyctiphanes) , with occasional fragments of fish. Nor have 
I been able to find any definite evidence that this whale ever succeeds in capturing 
copepods, or any of the smaller plankton for that matter, though, according to 
Murie (1865), the stomach of one captured near Gravesend, England, contained 
fragments of medusae as well as of Crustacea. In short, euphausiids, and these 
alone, are its support, apart from fish. 
The Atlantic humpback ( Megaptera nodosa), which is not uncommon off the 
New England coast, though never so plentiful there as the Atlantic right whale 
once was or as the finback now is, subsists on much the same diet as the latter — viz, 
fish and pelagic shrimps (euphausiids)— while Andrews (1909) found its close ally, 
the Pacific humpback, feeding on the latter alone; smaller planktonic animals have 
never been found in humpback stomachs so far as I am aware. 
The blue whale, or sulphur bottom ( Balxnoptera musculus), which is not un- 
common along the coasts of the Gulf of Maine and is numerous in Newfoundland 
waters, is even more dependent on euphausiids than are the two whales previously 
mentioned, for it is not known to eat fish at all, on the one hand, or copepods, on 
the other. All the sulphur-bottom stomachs recently examined (a considerable 
number in the total) have been packed with euphausiids alone — Thysanoessa in 
whales from Newfoundland (G. M. Allen, 1916), Meganyctiphanes in others taken 
off the west of Ireland (Lillie, 1910; Burfield, 1913; Hamilton, 1915 and 1916), and 
Euphausia in the Antarctic (Liouville, 1913). The destructiveness of these huge 
mammals is illustrated by Collett’s (1877, p. 161) statements that sulphur-bottom 
stomachs frequently contain 300 to 400 liters of shrimps, and that occasionally one 
is taken crammed with up to 1,200 liters of Thysanoessa. Andrews (1916), too, 
writes that this whale feeds exclusively on euphausiids; Millais (1906), however, 
credits it with a copepod diet. 
The North Atlantic right whale ( Eubalsena glacialis), once common in New 
England waters though now unhappily nearly extinct there (and with it the glories 
of the New England coastwise whale fishery), subsists largely on euphausiids, 
notably on Thysanoessa (Kukenthal, 1900). Collett (1909), indeed, found nothing 
else in right whales taken off the Hebrides and off Iceland. The only eyewitness’s 
account of its feeding habits in New England waters, for which we must turn back 
nearly 200 years (Dudley, 1734, quoted by G. M. Allen, 1916) tells of “this whale, 
in still weather, skimming on the surface of the water to take in a sort of reddish 
spawn or brett, as some call it, that at some times will lie on the top of the water 
for a mile together.” From its geographic situation and mode of occurrence this 
