FROM the company of hungry merciless Sharks and their relatives, an easy transition carries us to the largest of Ocean-inhabitants—the Whale.
Not that sharks and whales belong to the same division in the Animal Kingdom. Not that they have aught in common beyond the possession of great size and power. But because of that size and power, they naturally come together at the close of a sketch of Ocean Life.
Sharks, if not in every respect to be regarded as fully and entirely Fishes, are yet in most essentials “fish-like.” But Whales belong to a higher level.
When we reach Whales we leave lower animals behind us; we step upon the uppermost rungs of the Ladder of Life; we are in the society of Mammals.
At the bottom of that ladder we found microscopic beings, specks of living jelly, so minute as to be invisible, so primitive as to be without development, without separate organs. At the top of that ladder stands Man; far more than animal, by virtue of his mental and spiritual being; and yet an animal, by virtue of his bodily development.
The physical part of a man marks him as a Mammal. To Mammals belong all Quadrupeds; but not Birds, not Reptiles, not Fishes.
A whale is not a fish. He is a Mammal. He is warm-blooded. He breathes air through lungs. He—or rather, she—feeds the young of the race, as they are fed by quadrupeds and human beings on land. A whale-mother will fight to the death in defence of her little one.
Nor is the whale the only Mammal of ocean-waters. To this highest division of backboned creatures belong also the Porpoise, a near relative of the Whale; and the fierce Walrus, met often by Arctic travellers; and the gentle Seal, with its pathetic human eyes, and its warm soft coat, for the sake of which it suffers too frequently cruel treatment at the hand of man.
Many different kinds of whales inhabit the sea,—such as the Rorqual, the Hump-backed, the Ziphoid. The two which are most widely known, and which may be regarded as foremost though unconscious rivals in human favour, are—the Right Whale, of higher latitudes, and the Sperm Whale of tropical regions.
