The Greenland whale, commonly called a ‘fish’ by the whalers, is, as all know, a mammal, warm-blooded, reproducing and suckling its young like any of the land mammals. Its outward resemblance to a fish is merely a provision of nature, whereby its shape is adapted to the conditions in which it lives; that is, for a wholly marine life. Its swimming ‘fins’ when stripped of their covering, are found to correspond to the fore-limbs of quadrupeds, and although the whale does not possess any hind-limbs, there are rudiments of such to be found in their place, or at least the rudiments of the pelvis to which the after limbs were attached.
In colour the whale is usually black or bluish-black above, and whitish or piebald below. Sometimes white spots occur on the upper parts, and the markings frequently vary with the individual. The young are lighter-coloured, being bluish.
An adult whale varies from forty to sixty feet in length; extra large ones run to sixty-five feet, and the largest recorded reached eighty feet in length.
The whalers have different names for differently sized whales. Suckers are the young under a year old; Shortheads is also applied to the young as long as they continue to be suckled. Stunts are two years old; Scull-fish have bone less than six feet in length; Size-fish have the bone exceeding that length.
The following are the measurements given by Dr. Robert Goodsir of a large female whale killed in Ponds bay:—
| ft. | in. | |
| Length from the fork of the tail, along the abdomen, to tip of lower jaw | 65 | 0 |
| Girth behind swimming-paws | 30 | 0 |
| Breadth of tail, from tip to tip | 24 | 0 |
| Greatest breadth between lower jaws | 10 | 0 |
| Length of head, measured in a line from articulation of lower jaw | 21 | 0 |
| Length of vulva | 1 | 2 |
| From posterior end of vulva to anus | 0 | 6 |
| From anterior end of vulva to umbilicus | 8 | 0 |
| Mammæe placed opposite the anterior third of vulva and six inches from tip of it. | ||
| Length of sulcus of mammæ | 0 | 3 |
| Breadth of sulcus, on each side of it | 0 | 2 |
| From tuberosity of humerus to point of pectoral fin | 8 | 0 |
| Greatest breadth of fin | 3 | 11 |
| Depth of lip (interior of lower) | 4 | 7 |
| From the inner canthus of eye to extreme angle of fold of mouth | 1 | 5 |
| From inner to outer canthus | 0 | 6 |
| Length of block of laminæ beleen, measuring round the curve of the gum, after being removed from the head | 16 | 6 |
| Length of longest lamina on each side | 10 | 6 |
| Distance between the laminæ at the gum | 0 | 0⅞ |
| Breadth of pulp cavity of largest lamina | 1 | 0 |
| Average length of pulp when extracted from one side of the largest laminæ | 0 | 5 |
| Number of laminae on either side, about 360. |
Female whales are larger and fatter than the males, so that a female will have an average of about ten more tons of blubber than an ordinary male. As will be seen from the above measurements, the head equals about a third of the length of the body, and the upper jaw, which carries the baleen or whalebone, is only a few feet shorter. The baleen is in the form of thin slabs or ‘splits’ set close together in the gum at right-angles to the length of the jaw-bone. At the base the splits are from six to twelve inches wide and from a quarter to nearly an inch in thickness. They taper slowly to their free end, and terminate in long hairs which extend upwards of six inches beyond the solid bone. Similar hairs are found along the inside of the bone. There are about 360 of these splits on each side of the jaw, and they are placed so as to slope backwards. The longest or ‘size split’ is in the middle of the side of the jaw, and the others decrease in length in front and behind. It derives its name from being the split by which the length and weight of the bone is computed. The longest split recorded measured fourteen feet in length, but the ordinary length in adult whales is from nine to ten feet. Bone of that length will average nearly a ton weight to a whale. Bone six feet and under brings only half the price of longer bone. The laminæ are usually pale-blue; in the young they are sometimes green and black; in older whales nearly black, and occasionally striped white and black.
This bone in the whale’s mouth acts as a swab or sieve to entangle and collect the small animals upon which it feeds. The lower lip is very deep, and when closed fits close to the head, the edge forming a bow as it curves backwards from the front. When feeding, this lip is let down, so that it projects nearly at right-angles, forming a sort of trough and conducting the water, as the whale moves through it, to the tangle of hairs of the exposed bone. When sufficient food has been collected the lip is closed and the food removed from the baleen by the broad tongue. A whale when feeding travels at, or near the surface, at a rate varying from two to four miles an hour. The speed at which a free whale travels through the water appears to have been greatly exaggerated. When harpooned, and dragging a whaleboat, the speed rarely exceeds six miles an hour, and as the mass of the whale greatly exceeds that of the boat the latter cannot to any great extent retard its speed, especially as the whale is then exerting its utmost power in its efforts to escape.
Bundles of Whalebone on the ‘Era.’