THE COMMON, OR GREENLAND WHALE.
(Balæna mysticetus.)
“Nature’s strange work, vast Whales of different form,
Toss up the troubled flood, and are themselves a storm;
Uncouth the sight, when they in dreadful play,
Discharge their nostrils, and refund a sea;
Or angry lash the foam with hideous sound,
And scatter all the watery dust around;
Fearless, the fierce destructive monsters roll,
Ingulf the fish, and drive the flying shoal;
In deepest seas these living isles appear,
And deepest seas can scarce their pressure bear;
Their bulk would more than fill the shelvy strait,
And fathom’d depths would yield beneath their weight.”
The Whale is not properly a fish; since, though it lives in the sea, and has fins and a tail instead of legs and feet, it resembles in most other respects a seal, and differs from fishes, properly so called, in many important points. Indeed, it is always included in the class Mammalia, by zoologists, as it brings forth its young alive, and nourishes them with its milk; and hence a conceited person, who said he knew every fish from the shrimp to the Whale, was justly laughed at, as neither the Whale nor the shrimp are included in the fishes by zoologists.
The general form of the Whale’s body is that of a fish; but the tail is placed horizontally instead of vertically, and the skeleton of the fins exactly resembles that of a hand affixed to a contracted arm, though it is covered with so thick a skin that no trace of the formation of the bones can be discovered externally. There are only two fins, which are very small, and close to the head. The Whale, however, differs from fishes most materially in its having warm blood; and in its lungs, which are exactly the same as those of quadrupeds. Hence, though the Whale can remain a long time under water without breathing, it is compelled to come to the surface whenever it does breathe, and for this purpose it is furnished with two large nostrils, or blow-holes as they are called. The blow-holes are most beautifully and curiously contrived to close when the animal sinks under water; so that not a drop of water can enter the lungs, however great the pressure may be. The Whale is also provided with a very thick skin, containing an immense quantity of liquid oil, called the blubber, which is so easily detached from the flesh, that when a Whale is killed, the blubber, which is sometimes two feet thick, is taken off by passing a common spade between it and the body. This thick oily skin is a non-conductor of heat, and is thus admirably adapted for preventing the warm blood of the Whale from being chilled by the cold of the water. The true fishes, which are unprovided with such a covering, have cold blood, and are therefore not susceptible of chills.
The common Whale has no teeth in either jaw, but its mouth is furnished with a kind of fringe of numerous long horny laminæ, which are what we call whalebone, and which form a kind of strainer, admitting only the small fish on which the Whale feeds. This Whalebone is one of the valuable products of the whale, though the oil is most important.
“As when enclosing harpooners assail,
In hyperborean seas, the slumbering Whale;
Soon as the javelins pierce the scaly side,
He groans, he darts impetuous down the tide;
And, rack’d all o’er with lacerating pain,
He flies remote beneath the flood in vain.”
Falconer.