Chamois are also increasing in the neighbourhood of Mount Cook. The first were introduced in 1907, when eight were received as a present from the late Emperor of Austria. By latest accounts there is now a considerable flock in that mountain region.
CHAPTER VII.
CETACEA—WHALES, DOLPHINS, AND PORPOISES.
How little any of us in New Zealand know about the monsters of the deep which are to be met with in the seas round our coasts! I seldom meet with any one who knows anything about them, or who can furnish me with anything beyond the merest shreds of information. I myself have seen a few whales and dolphins, and numerous porpoises; and this is the experience of all who travel by sea and care to observe its wonders. But such observers are few. Most of those whose business takes them on the great waters are concerned with other things than the animal life which the sea contains; and even fishermen, whose occupation takes them out constantly among this animal life, can give little information which is of the slightest value on anything but fishes.
Whales and their allies are not fishes, but are warm-blooded mammals, which suckle their young, and which breathe air—not dissolved oxygen, as fishes do. They constitute the order Cetacea. Twenty or more species are met with in New Zealand seas. Of these many are most imperfectly known, and several are only recognized by their bones.
Zoologically cetaceans are fish-like mammals, which have the tail expanded into horizontal flukes, the anterior limbs converted into fin-like paddles, and the posterior limbs represented by some rudimentary bones. Their bodies are nearly quite destitute of hair, and, as they have to breathe air, their nostrils are represented by a single or double blowhole, which is nearly always situated far back upon the skull. Some of the order have simple conical teeth; others have the jaws furnished with plates of baleen, or whalebone.
Whales include the largest of all vertebrate animals, but their reputed measurements, like those of many fish, have to be received with a grain of salt. The largest whales are the Rorquals, and perhaps 85 ft. is about the maximum recorded length. Compare that with the biggest dray-horse or the prize fat bullock at a show, and then try to realize what a huge bulk it is.
The whalebone-whales are well represented in New Zealand waters, though individuals are now rare compared with their relative abundance a century ago. A Norwegian company which started operations on a large scale in the North Island a few years ago abandoned the enterprise after trying it for a year or two. There was not enough money in it. Yet whalebone is enormously valuable—it was worth £2,000 a ton twenty years ago, and, in spite of numerous substitutes, it still keeps its place.