THE LIVING WORLD. 
“5 
The California Gray Whale ( Rhacianedes glaucus) lives mostly in the 
shoaler water of bays and gulfs. It does not exceed forty-five feet in length 
and yields about twenty or thirty barrels of oil. A record of whales seen shows 
that as many as forty thousand of the California gray whale have been known 
to pass in -a single season. 
The Hump-Backed Whale (. Megaptera versabilis ) has a hump upon its 
back, a lump on its lower jaw, and a number of small eminences on the top 
of its head, and is certainly entitled to being regarded as “ your eminence ” 
among whales. It is an oil giver, but its whalebone is valueless. This whale 
is practically ubiquitous and is a very common sight at sea. As it lies on its 
side to suckle its cub, or as a male and female conduct their courting with 
love taps and other human peculiarities, the creatures are comically suggestive 
of an unwritten satire upon the human being. 
The Sulphur Bottom ( Sibbaldius sulfurens ) is the largest living mammal, 
and is supposed to be the largest specimen that has ever existed. It is worth¬ 
less to the fisherman, which is possibly quite as well, as its extraordinary 
strength and rapidity, and its lack of gregarious habits, would be more likely 
to furnish fresh illustrations of “ a fisherman’s luck” than to prove a profitable 
return for hard labor. 
The Razor Back (. Balcenoptera musculus ) is very large and powerful, colored 
bowhead Greenland whale ( Balcena mysticetus). 
black above and white beneath, and thinning out from head to tail like the 
edge proceeding from a thick-hefted knife. It is a producer of oil and of whale¬ 
bone. 
The Bowhead, Greenland Whale, or Polar Whale (. Balcena mysticetus ), 
though smaller and perhaps less curious than many other species, is the one 
which plays the largest part in human economy. It varies from forty to sixty 
feet in length, and a single whale has been known to yield eleven thousand 
gallons of oil and more than three thousand pounds of whalebone. It feeds 
upon the small crustaceans and mollusks which fall into its mouth as the 
whale swims along, using its baleen, or wliale-bone, as a strainer. It has been 
known to use up a mile of harpoon rope, and has the ability to stay below the 
surface for more than an hour. . ...... 1 
The Bonnet Whale, or Right Whale (. Balcena sieboldu ), is very much 
like the bowhead, but has an excrescence or bonnet on its upper jaw. It is an 
oil-well and artificial vertebrae manufacturer. The whale not only stands on 
the borderland which represents the transition of fishes to mammalia, but its 
history is so old and so consecutive that its name has become a household term. 
