Cetacean

“ At the time we so rashly attacked the whale the mighty mollusc must have been in his death-throes, for immediately after our boat’s disappearance the whale ‘sounded.’ When, a minute or two later, he rose again to the surface, the other boats’ crews saw him busily turning over and over, as if collecting the scattered fragments of his late victim. At that time they had not noticed me among the various flotsam, but it must have been then that I vanished down the capacious gullet of the voracious cetacean. ”

“ I rose, went and leaned on my elbows before the panes, and watched. In a full electric light, an enormous black mass, quite immovable, was suspended in the midst of the waters. I watched it attentively, seeking to find out the nature of this gigantic cetacean. ”

“ As far as we are concerned, the chief difference is in their way of breathing. The cetaceans breathe like ourselves, and are obliged to come to the surface of the water to take air; while fishes have a special apparatus, which I will explain to you presently, which enables them to breathe in the water. This is a disadvantage to the cetacean in his fish life; nevertheless, of all the mammals (as may easily be imagined) he is the one who can remain longest under the water. ”

“ Zoölogically, whales, or mammallia of the cetacean order, are divided into two great families, — 'blowing' cetacea, so called from the habit of spouting water through the nasal openings or spiracles in the top of the head; and 'herbivorous' cetacea (Manati) . The family of 'blowing' cetacea is divided into two tribes, — the tribe of whales (Balaena) ; and the dolphin tribe, distinguished mainly by the size and shape of the head. ”

“ They are more than guttural—stomachic rather. They harmonise finely with those of the sea, and sometimes, indeed, bear a curious resemblance to some of its minor, sullen gurgles, deep within the cavern. But no birds fly out.
Several times, again, now, I have seen this large small cetacean, and once another one, larger still—in fact, an unmistakable small whale, which came briskly up at no great distance away and blew a jet of oily-looking vapour from its nose. It looked almost black, and had the right whale shape, though not more, perhaps, than some dozen or twenty feet long. ”

“ Neither the pictures nor the descriptions of him at all resemble our whiting, so I don't know what sort of fish our whiting is. I only know that he isn't a whiting, and isn't the remotest relation to the dolphin, because he is a fish and has scales, while the dolphin is a cetacean."
"What's a cetacean?" asked Charley.
"A vertebrated, mammiferous marine animal."
"Well; go on; English all that."
"Well, whales, dolphins narwhals, and porpoises are the principal cetaceans. They are not fish, but marine animals, and they suckle their young." ”

“ Driving right upon the back of the nearest240 monster, two harpoons are plunged into his body up to the “hitches.” The sheet is at once hauled aft, and the boat flies up into the wind; while the terrified cetacean vainly tries, by tremendous writhing and plunging, to rid himself of the barbed weapon. The mast is unshipped, and snugly stowed away; oars are handled, and preparation made to deliver the coup de grâce. But finding his efforts futile, the whale has sounded, and his reappearance must be awaited. ”

“ Cetacean bones are easily affected by weather, and if exposed to the sun, rain and wind for a comparatively short time the hard exterior becomes white and chalk-like.
The whale’s skeleton is highly modified in adaptation to an aquatic existence and is very distinctive of the cetacean order. In a general view it is seen to be greatly elongated, the skull is pointed, the fore-limbs are short and flat and the hind-limbs are represented by nodules of bone; all these accompany a fish-like body which offers little resistance to its passage through the water. ”

“ One calm clear morning, with the water of the strait waveless and smooth as a mirror, two of these grand cetaceans are seen swimming along, one in the wake of the other, and so close in shore that they might almost be reached with the boat-hook. As they swim past the spot where the boat-builders are at work, they, from their elevated position, can look down on their spout-holes, and even see them wink! The huge creatures, slowly gliding on, pass under a beech-tree growing by the water’s edge, so near that their heads are almost brushed by its drooping branches. ”

“ THE sea is inhabited by three families of mammalian animals, which, though they may be so "very like a whale" as to have been sometimes spoken of together as cetaceans, are quite distinct in their structure and habits, and show evidences of distinct origin. They are the cetaceans, including the whales, dolphins, and porpoises; the pinnipeds, including the seals, sea-lions, and walruses; and the sirenians, including the manatees and dugongs. ”

“ Three distinct species are familiarly known. First there is the Right whale, which is ordinarily sought for in the northern fisheries. The average length of this cetacean is sixty feet, though it has been known to attain the length of eighty feet. It has no dorsal fin, and beneath its skin is a thick layer of blubber. One of these monsters alone will yield as much as a hundred barrels of oil. ”

“ Not so many people, perhaps, believe that a whale is a fish, instead of a mammal, but few indeed are the individuals who do not still think that a cetacean possesses a sort of natural fountain on the top of its head, whence, for some recondite reason, it ejects at regular intervals streams of water into the air. ”

“ By nature, this cetacean prefers a cold climate to a warm one. The season for their migration is at a different period to that of the wild fowl, for the "spouter" leaves the zone of the hot sun and swims great distances until he reaches cooler water. Sometimes it is from the North Atlantic to the South Atlantic or Indian Oceans, and at others from the Indian Ocean southeasterly to the South Pacific Ocean, the water of which is cooled by the icebergs of the South Pole section. ”

“ The more modern exaggerations in the dimensions of the bigger Whales are probably due to the fact that measurements have been taken, not in a straight line from snout to tail, but along the bulging sides of the Cetacean, rendered even more convex than in nature by decomposition, and by pressure due to the immense tonnage of the creature.
The Cetacea are the most perfectly aquatic of all mammals; they never leave the waters which they inhabit. ”

“ In a few generations there would be enough to fill the ocean, to make it solid, to make it rot, extinguishing other beings, depopulating the globe.... But death was charged with saving universal life. The cetaceans bore down upon this living density and with their insatiable mouths devoured the nourishment by ton loads. Infinitely little fish seconded the efforts of the marine giants, stuffing themselves with the eggs of the herring. The most gluttonous fish, the cod and the hake, pursued these prairies of meat, pushing them, toward the coasts and finally dispersing them. ”

“ For some time past, vessels had been met by “an enormous thing,” a long object, spindle-shaped, occasionally phosphorescent, and infinitely larger and more rapid in its movements than a whale.
The facts relating to this apparition (entered in various log-books) agreed in most respects as to the shape of the object or creature in question, the untiring rapidity of its movements, its surprising power of locomotion, and the peculiar life with which it seemed endowed. If it was a cetacean, it surpassed in size all those hitherto classified in science. ”

“ With some exceptions, cetaceans are generally timid, inoffensive animals, active in their movements and affectionate in their disposition towards one another, especially the mother towards the young, of which there is usually but one, or at most two at a time. They are generally gregarious, swimming in herds or “schools,” sometimes amounting to many thousands in number; though some species are met with either singly or in pairs. ”

“ If we do NOT know them all—if Nature has still secrets in the deeps for us, nothing is more conformable to reason than to admit the existence of fishes, or cetaceans of other kinds, or even of new species, of an organisation formed to inhabit the strata inaccessible to soundings, and which an accident of some sort has brought at long intervals to the upper level of the ocean. ”

“ Now it happened that this whale appeared to have no wish to leave the waters of the island. Therefore, whether from the windows of Granite House, or from Prospect Heights, Herbert and Gideon Spilett, when they were not hunting, or Neb unless presiding over his fires, never left the telescope, but watched all the animal's movements. The cetacean, having entered far into Union Bay, made rapid furrows across it from Mandible Cape to Claw Cape, propelled by its enormously powerful flukes, and making its way through the water at a rate little short of twelve knots an hour. ”

“ When a whale comes ashore it is usually in some inaccessible place, and if the fact is communicated to a museum the finder usually places a considerable price on his discovery, which makes the investigation too expensive to be undertaken. When our fisheries are properly organized it will be possible to study the cetacean fauna much more closely and accurately than is at present the case. ”

“ Now, it was the "monster" who, justly or unjustly, was accused of their disappearance, and, thanks to it, communication between the different continents became more and more dangerous. The public demanded peremptorily that the seas should at any price be relieved from this formidable cetacean. ”

“ Around, far as the eye can reach, the bushy spouts are rising. Hundreds of gigantic cetaceans are disporting, apparently not at all “gallied” by the conflict which has been going on. Some are near enough to the fast boat to be touched by hand. “Potentialities of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice” are here; but acquisition is impossible for want of steam. The vessel, bound to that immense body, can only242 crawl tortoise-like before the wind—lucky, indeed, to have a harbour ahead where the whale may be cut in, even though it be forty miles away. ”

“ Then, besides the fat, which would insure for a long time a store of stearine and glycerine, there were still the bones, for which a use could doubtless be found, although there were neither umbrellas nor stays used at Granite House. The upper part of the mouth of the cetacean was, indeed, provided on both sides with eight hundred horny blades, very elastic, of a fibrous texture, and fringed at the edge like great combs, of which the teeth, six feet long, served to retain the thousands of animalculæ, little fish, and molluscs, on which the whale fed. ”

“ As we have mentioned above, the cetaceans are hardly fish, for in many respects they may be classed with land-animals, since they produce their young alive and nourish it by giving it suck; their skin is smooth, and in some cases covered with hair, not scaly like that of fish; their blood too is warm, and their flesh tastes something like beef. ”

“ The smaller kinds of cetaceans, of which the variety is immense, are in the main fish-eaters, but the killer seizes and devours porpoises and seals also, and a band of them may unite to worry a big cachalot to death. Most species go about in small bands, or "schools." ”

“ They are probably the white-beaked dolphin, but there is much uncertainty as to the species of cetaceans inhabiting the North Sea, and several kinds are called by the fishermen by the common name of scoulter. They come inshore in rough weather, and are fond of following vessels, which perhaps they may take to be of a kindred species. We sailed into Harlingen at three in the afternoon, where our appearance attracted much attention. We pushed through the lock to a comfortable mooring-place in a very narrow canal, and made all snug, putting the awning up between us and the curious crowd on shore. ”

“ By virtue of their strength, their enormous locomotive powers, and of the continuity of the seas which they inhabit, the cetaceans should seem to be able to play a truly cosmopolitan part. They do not. Each species is cantoned within an area of greater or less extent, beyond which a few individuals may occasionally make excursions, but always to return soon within their bounds. ”

“ Then I learned without surprise that I was the only survivor of my boat’s crew. Every one of my fellows had disappeared before the horror-stricken gaze of the men in the other boats, who, being but a short distance astern of us, had witnessed the whole tragedy. It appeared that we had attacked a cachalot in the act of devouring226 one of the gigantic cuttle-fish, or ‘squid,’ upon which these cetaceans feed, and of which it is most probable no mortal eye has yet beheld a full-sized specimen. For they inhabit the middle depths of oceans, never coming to the surface voluntarily. ”

“ May I here offer a few notes picked up on the subject of whales, etc. The sperm or cachalot whale is a dangerous and bold fighter and is perhaps the most interesting of all cetaceans. His skin, like that of the porpoise, is as thin as gold-beaters' leaf. Underneath it is a coating of fine hair or fur, not attached to the skin, and then the blubber. He has enormous teeth or tushes in the lower jaw, but has no baleen. He devours very large fish, even sharks, but his principal food seems to be cuttle-fish and squids, some of them of as great bulk as himself. ”

“ Because scientists are attempting to determine areas in which cetaceans are often, occasionally, seldom, or never found, and are ultimately describing why animals are found in one area and not another, persons who want to go a step further in their participation in observer programs may want to keep and report records of their entire cruise tracks and zones in which vigilance was maintained but no cetaceans were observed. Data obtained in this manner may be used as the foundation of estimates of cetacean populations, estimates which are extremely difficult to obtain by any other method. ”