Distribution of Marine Animals in general—Fishes—the Marine Mammalia—
Phocæ, Dolphins, and Whales.
BEFORE Sir James Ross’s voyage to the Antarctic regions, the profound
and dark abysses of the ocean were supposed to be entirely destitute of
animal life; now it may be presumed that no part of it is uninhabited,
since during that expedition live creatures were fished up from a depth
of 6000 feet. But as most of the larger fish usually frequent shallow
water near the coasts, deep seas must form barriers as impassable to the
greater number of them as mountains do to land animals. The polar, the
equatorial ocean, and the inland seas, have each their own particular
inhabitants; almost all the species and some of the genera of the marine
creation are different in the two hemispheres, and even in each
particular sea; and under similar circumstances the species are for the
most part representative, though not the same. Identity of species,
however, does occur, even at the two extremities of the globe, for
living animals were brought up from the profound depths of the Antarctic
Ocean which Sir James Ross recognized to be the very same species which
he had often met with in the Arctic seas. “The only way they could have
got from the one pole to the other must have been through the tropics;
but the temperature of the sea in these regions is such that they could
not exist in it unless at a depth of nearly 2000 fathoms. At that depth
they might pass from the Arctic to the Antarctic Ocean without a
variation of 5 degrees of temperature; whilst any land animal, at the
most favourable season, must experience a difference of 50 degrees, and,
if in winter, no less than 150 degrees of Fahrenheit’s thermometer;”—a
strong presumption that marine creatures can exist at the depth and
under the enormous pressure of 12,000 feet of water. The stratum of
constant temperature in the ocean may indeed afford the means of
migration from pole to pole to those which live in shallower water, as
they would only have to descend to a depth of 7200 feet at the equator.
The great currents, no doubt, offer paths for fish without any sudden
change of temperature: the inhabitants of the Antarctic Sea may come to
the coasts of Chile and Peru by the cold stream that flows along them
from the south polar ocean, and, on the contrary, tropical fish may
travel by the Gulf-stream to the middle and high latitudes in the
Atlantic, but few will leave either one or other to inhabit the adjacent
seas, on account of the difference of heat. Nevertheless, quantities of
medusæ or sea-nettles are brought by the Gulf-stream to feed the whales
at the Azores, though the whales themselves never enter the stream, on
account of its warmth.
The form and nature of the coasts have great influence on the
distribution of fishes; when they are uniformly of the same geological
structure, so as to afford the same food and shelter, the fish are
similar. Their distribution is also determined by climate, the depth of
the sea, the nature of the bottom, and the influx of fresh water.
The ocean, the most varied and most wonderful part of the creation,
absolutely teems with life: “things innumerable, both great and small,
are there.” The forms are not to be numbered even of those within our
reach; yet, numerous as they are, few have been found exempt from the
laws of geographical distribution.
The discoloured portions of the ocean generally owe the tints they
assume to myriads of insects. In the Arctic seas, where the water is
pure transparent ultramarine colour, parts of 20 or 30 square miles,
1500 feet deep, are green and turbid from the quantity of minute
animalcules. Captain Scoresby calculated that it would require 80,000
persons, working unceasingly from the creation of man to the present
day, to count the number of insects contained in 2 miles of the green
water. What, then, must be the amount of animal life in the polar
regions, where one-fourth part of the Greenland Sea, for 10 degrees of
latitude, consists of that water! These animalcules are of the medusa
tribe, mixed with others that are moniliform. Some medusæ are very
large, floating like jelly; and although apparently carried at random by
the waves, each species has its definite location, and even organs of
locomotion. One species comes in spring from the Greenland seas to the
coast of Holland; and Baron Humboldt met with an immense shoal of them
in the Atlantic, migrating at a rapid rate.
Dr. Pœppig mentions a stratum of red water near Cape Pilares, 24 miles
long and 7 broad, which, seen from the mast-head, appeared dark-red, but
on proceeding it became a brilliant purple, and the wake of the vessel
was rose-colour. The water was perfectly transparent, but small red dots
could be discerned moving in spiral lines. The vermilion sea off
California is no doubt owing to a similar cause, as Mr. Darwin found red
and chocolate-coloured water on the coast of Chile over spaces of
several square miles full of microscopic animalcules, darting about in
every direction, and sometimes exploding. Infusoria are not confined to
fresh water; the bottom of the sea swarms with them. Siliceous-coated
infusoria are found in the mud of the coral islands under the equator;
and 68 species were discovered in the mud in Erebus Bay, near the
Antarctic pole. These minute forms of organized being, invisible to the
naked eye, are intensely and extensively developed in both of the polar
oceans, and serve for food to the higher orders of fish in latitudes
beyond the limits of the larger vegetation, though they themselves
probably live on the microscopic plant already mentioned, which abounds
in all seas. Some are peculiar to each of the polar seas, some are
common to both, and a few are distributed extensively throughout the
ocean.
The enormous prodigality of animal life supplies the place of
vegetation, so scanty in the ocean in comparison with that which clothes
the land, and which probably would be insufficient for the supply of the
marine creation, were the deficiency not made up by the superabundant
land vegetation and insects carried to the sea by rivers. The fish that
live on sea-weed must bear a smaller proportion to those that are
predacious than the herbivorous land animals do to the carnivorous. Fish
certainly are most voracious; none are without their enemies; they prey
and are preyed upon; and there are two which devour even the live coral,
hard as its coating is; nor does the coat of mail of shell-fish protect
them. Whatever the proportion may be which predatory fish bear to
herbivorous, the quantity of both must be enormous, for, besides the
infusoria, the great forests of fuci and sea-weed are everywhere a mass
of infinitely varied forms of being, either parasitical, feeding on
them, seeking shelter among them, or in pursuit of others.
The observations of Professor E. Forbes in the Egean Sea show that depth
has great influence in the geographical distribution of marine animals.
From the surface to the depth of 230 fathoms there are eight distinct
regions in that sea, each of which has its own vegetation and
inhabitants. The number of shell-fish and other marine animals is
greater specifically and individually between the surface and the depth
of 2 fathoms than in all the regions below taken together, and both
decrease downwards to the depth of 105 fathoms; between which and the
depth of 230 only eight shells were found; and animal life ceases in
that part of the Mediterranean at 300 fathoms. The changes in the
different zones are not abrupt; some of the creatures of an under region
always appear before those of the region above vanish; and although
there are a few species the same in some of the eight zones, only two
are common to all. Those near the surface have forms and colours
belonging to the inhabitants of southern latitudes, while those lower
down are analogous to the animals of northern seas; so that in the sea
depth corresponds with latitude, as height does on land. Moreover, the
extent of the geographical distribution of any species is proportional
to the depth at which it lives; consequently, those living near the
surface are less widely dispersed than those inhabiting deep water.
Professor Forbes also discovered several shells living in the
Mediterranean that have hitherto only been known as fossils of the
tertiary strata; and also that the species least abundant as fossils are
most numerous alive, and the converse; hence, the former are near their
maximum, while the latter are approaching to extinction. These very
important experiments, it is true, were confined to the Mediterranean;
but analogous results have been obtained in the Bay of Biscay and in the
British seas. There are four zones of depth in our seas, each of which
has its own inhabitants, consisting of shell-fish, crustaceæ, corallines
and other marine creatures. The first zone lies between high and
low-water marks, consequently it is shallow in some places and 30 feet
deep in others. In all parts of the northern hemisphere it presents the
same phenomena; but the animals vary with the nature of the coast,
according as it is of rock, gravel, sand, or mud. In the British seas
the animals of this littoral or coast zone are distributed in three
groups that differ decidedly from one another, though many are common to
all. One occupies the seas on the southern shores of our islands and
both channels; a middle group has its centre in the Irish seas; and the
third is confined to the Scottish seas, and the adjacent coasts of
England and Ireland. The second zone extends from the low-water mark to
a depth below it of from 7 to 15 fathoms, and is crowded with animals
living on and among the sea-weeds, as radiated animals, shell-fish, and
many zoophites. In the third zone, which is below that of vegetable
life, marine animals are more numerous and of greater variety than in
any other. It is particularly distinguished by arborescent creatures,
that seem to take the place of plants, carnivorous mollusca, together
with large and peculiar radiata. It ranges from the depth of 15 to 50
fathoms. The last zone is the region of stronger corals, peculiar
mollusca, and of others that only inhabit deep water. This zone extends
to the depth of 100 fathoms or more.
Except in the Antarctic seas, the superior zone of shell-fish is the
only one of which anything is known in the great oceans, which have
numerous special provinces. Many, like the harp, are tropical; others,
as the nautilus and the pearl-oyster, are nearly so; the latter abounds
throughout the Persian Gulf and on the coasts of Borneo and Ceylon,
which are thought to produce the finest pearls. There are many also in
the Caribbean Sea, and in the Pacific, and especially in the Bay of
Panama, but whether the species are different is not known. Some shells
are exceedingly limited in their distribution, as the Haliotis gigantea,
which is peculiar to the sea of Van Diemen’s Land.
According to Sir Charles Lyell, nearly all the species of molluscous
animals in the seas of the two temperate zones are distinct, yet the
whole species in one bears a strong analogy to that in the other; both
differ widely from those in the tropical and arctic oceans; and, under
the same latitude, species vary with the longitude. The east and west
coasts of tropical America have only one shell-fish in common; and those
of both differ from the shell-fish in the islands of the Pacific and the
Galapagos Archipelago, which forms a distinct region. Notwithstanding
the many definite marine provinces, the same species are occasionally
found in regions widely separated. A few of the shell-fish of the
Galapagos Archipelago are the same with those of the Philippine islands,
though so far apart. The east coast of America, which is poor in
shell-fish, has a considerable number in common with the coasts of
Europe.
The Cypræa moneta lives in the Mediterranean, the seas of South Africa,
the Mauritius, the East Indies, China, and the South Seas even to
Otaheite; and the Janthina frangilis, the animal of which is of a
beautiful violet-colour, floats on the surface in every tropical and
temperate sea. Mollusca have a greater power of locomotion than is
generally believed. Some migrate in their larva state, being furnished
with lobes which enable them to swim freely. The larva of the scalop is
capable of migrating to distant regions; the argonauta spreads its sail
and swims along the surface.
The numerous species of Zoophytes which construct the extensive coral
banks and atolls are chiefly confined to the tropical seas of Polynesia,
the East and West Indies: the family is represented by a very few
species in our seas, and in the Mediterranean they are smaller and
different, generally, from those in the torrid zone.
The larger and more active inhabitants of the waters obey the same laws
with the rest of the creation, though the provinces are in some
instances very extensive. Dr. Richardson observes that there is one vast
province in the Pacific, extending 42 degrees on each side of the
equator, between the meridians including Australia, New Zealand, the
Malay Archipelago, China, and Japan, in which the genera are the same;
but at its extremities the Arctic and Antarctic genera are mingled with
the tropical forms. Many species, however, which abound in the Indian
Ocean range as far north as Japan, from which circumstance it is
presumed that a current sets in that direction. The middle portion of
this province is vastly extended in longitude, for very many species of
the Red Sea, the eastern coast of Africa, and the Mauritius range to the
Indian and China Seas, to those of northern Australia and all Polynesia;
so in this immense belt, which embraces three-fourths of the
circumference of the globe, and 60 degrees of latitude, the fish are
very nearly alike, the continuous chains of islands in the Pacific being
favourable to their dispersion. Few of the Pacific fish enter the
Atlantic;[174] and from the depth and want of islands in it the great
bulk of species is different on its two sides. North of the 44th
parallel, however, the number common to both shores increases. The
salmon of America is identical with that of the British isles, the
coasts of Norway and Sweden; the cod-fish is the same, as well as
several others of the cod family. The Cottus or bullhead tribe are also
the same on both sides of the North Atlantic, and they increase in
numbers and variety on approaching the Arctic seas. The same occurs in
the northern Pacific, though the generic forms differ from those in the
Atlantic. From the near approach of the American and Asiatic coasts at
Behring’s Straits, the fish on both sides are nearly alike, down to the
Sea of Okhotsk on one side and to Admiralty Inlet on the other. The
Japan Sea and the neighbouring coasts of China are frequented by fish
having northern forms, which are there mingled with many species common
to the temperate and warm parts of the ocean. Species of the genus Gadus
or Cod reappear in the southern seas very like those of the northern;
and two very remarkable Greenland genera, which inhabit deeper water,
and are seldom taken except when thrown up by a storm, have been
discovered on the coasts of New Zealand and South Australia, where the
fish differ but little from those in the seas of Van Diemen’s Land.
Several genera are peculiar to the southern hemisphere, and range
throughout the whole circle of the high latitudes. The sharks of the
China seas are, for the most part, identical with those of Australia:
the cartilaginous fish to which they belong have a much wider range than
those which have been under consideration.
The British islands lie between two great provinces of fishes—one to the
south, the other to the north—from each of which we have occasionally
visitors. The centre of the first is on the coasts of the Spanish
peninsula, extending into the Mediterranean; that on the north has its
centre about the Shetland Islands; but the group peculiarly British, and
found nowhere else, has its focus in the Irish Sea. It is, however,
mixed with fish from the seas bounding the western shores of central
Europe, which form a distinct group.
The Prince of Canino has shown that there are 853 species of European
fish, of which 210 live in fresh water, 643 are marine, and 60 of these
go up rivers to spawn. 444 of the marine fish inhabit the Mediterranean,
216 are British, and 171 are peculiar to the Scandinavian seas; so that
the Mediterranean is richest in variety of species. In it there are
peculiar sharks, sword-fish, dolphins, anchovies, and six species of
scomber or tunny, one of the largest of edible fish, for which fisheries
are established on the southern coasts of France, in Sardinia, Elba, the
Straits of Messina, and the Adriatic. Four of the species are found
nowhere else but in the Mediterranean. Rays of numerous species are
particularly characteristic of the Mediterranean, especially the two
torpedos, which have the power of giving an electric shock, and even the
electric spark. The Mediterranean has two or three American species, 41
fish in common with Madeira, one in common with the Red Sea, and a very
few seem to be Indian. Some of these fish must have entered the
Mediterranean before it was separated from the Red Sea by the Isthmus of
Suez; but geological changes have had very great influence on the
distribution of fishes everywhere. Taking salt and fresh-water fish
together, there are 100 species common to Italy and Britain; and
although the communication with the Black Sea is so direct, there are
only 27 fish common to it and the Mediterranean; but the Black Sea forms
a district by itself, having its own peculiar fish; and those in the
Caspian Sea differ entirely from those in every other part of the globe.
The island of Madeira, solitary amid a great expanse of ocean, has many
species. They amount in number to half of those in Britain; and nearly
as many are common to Britain and Madeira as to that island and the
Mediterranean; so that many of our fish have a wide range in the
Atlantic. The Mediterranean certainly surpasses the British and
Scandinavian seas in variety, though it is far inferior to either in the
quantity or quality of useful fish. Cod, turbot, haddock, tusk, ling,
herring, and many more, are better in northern seas than elsewhere, and
several exist there only.
The greater number of fish used by man as food frequent shoal water. The
coast of Holland, our own shores, and other parts of the North Sea where
the water is shallow, teem with a never-ending supply of excellent fish
of many kinds.
Vast numbers are gregarious and migratory. Cod arrive in the shallow
parts of the coast of Norway in February, in shoals many yards deep, and
so closely crowded together that the sounding-lead can hardly pass
between them: 16,000,000 have been caught in one place in a few weeks.
In April they return to the ocean. Herrings come in astonishing
quantities in winter.
The principal cod fisheries are on the banks of Newfoundland and the
Dogger-bank. They, like all animals, frequent the places to which they
have been accustomed. Herrings come to the same places for a series of
years, and then desert them, perhaps from having exhausted the food.
Pilchards, mackerel, and many others, may be mentioned among the
gregarious and migratory fish.
Sharks like deep water. They are found of different species in all
tropical and temperate seas; and, although always dangerous, they are
more ferocious in some places than in others, even of the same species.
Most lakes have fish of peculiar species, as the lake Baikal. The fishes
of the great interalpine Lake of Titicaca amount to 7 or 8 species, and
belong to genera only found in the higher regions of the Andes. In the
North American lakes there is a thick-scaled fish, analogous to those of
the early geological eras; and the gillaroo trout, which is remarkable
in having a gizzard, is found in Ireland only. Pike and salmon are the
only species of fresh-water fish common to Europe and North America; the
pike is, however, unknown west of the Rocky Mountains. The common salmon
does not exist beyond 45° of N. lat. on the eastern coast of America,
and it is probably confined within similar limits on the eastern coast
of Asia. It is said to be an inhabitant of all the northern parts of the
old world from the entrance of the Bay of Biscay to North Cape, and
along the arctic shores of Asia and Kamtchatka to the Sea of Okhotsk,
including the Baltic, White Sea, Gulf of Kara, and other inlets. Other
kinds of the Salmon tribe are plentiful in the estuaries of Kamtchatka
and on the opposite coast of America down to Oregon, but apparently they
do not extend to China. Salmon go up rivers to spawn, and make
extraordinary leaps over impediments of rocks or walls, in order to
reach the suitable places for depositing their eggs. Forty-four fish
inhabit the British lakes and rivers, and 50 those of Scandinavia, of
the very best kinds. The fresh-water fish of northern climates are
better than those of the southern.
Each tropical river has its own species of fish. The fresh-water fish of
China agree with those of India in generic forms, but not in
species;[175] and those of the Cape of Good Hope and South America
differ from those in India and China. Sea-fish, in immense quantities,
frequent the estuaries of rivers everywhere. The mouth of the
Mississippi is full of fish; and the quantity at the mouth of the Don,
in the Sea of Azof, is prodigious.
There are some singular analogies between the inhabitants of the sea and
those of the land. Many of the medusæ, two corallines, the Physalia, or
Portuguese man-of-war, of sailors, and some others, sting like a nettle
when touched. A cuttle-fish, at the Cape de Verde islands, changes
colour like the chameleon, assuming the tint of the ground under it.
Herrings, pilchards, and many other fish, as well as sea insects, are
luminous. The medusa tribe, the species of which are numerous, have the
faculty of shedding light in the highest degree. In warm climates,
especially, the sea seems to be on fire, and the wake of a ship is like
a vivid flame. Probably fish that go below the depths to which the light
of the sun penetrates are endowed with this faculty; and shoals of
luminous insects have been seen at a considerable depth below the
surface of the water. The glow-worm, some beetles, and fire-flies, shine
with the same pale-green light. But among the terrestrial inhabitants
there is nothing analogous to the property of the Gymnotus electricus of
South America, the trembler, or Silurus electricus, of the African
rivers, and the different species of the torpedo of the Mediterranean,
which possess the faculty of giving the electric shock.
The marine mammalia, which, as their name indicates, suckle their young,
form two distinct families—the Phocæ or seals, and the Cetacea or
whales, and porpoises: whilst fish breathe by means of gills, which
separate the air dissolved in the water, the marine mammalia possess
lungs and breathe as the terrestrial quadrupeds; they are obliged to
come to the surface from time to time, consequently, to inhale the air.
The first family consists of the seal tribe, and is most abundant in the
polar regions; they live exclusively on fish, are carnivorous, and are
seldom found at a great distance from the land or ice islands. To this
division belong the common seal and the walrus in our northern
hemisphere; whilst the genus Otaria or sea-lion, with different forms
and characters, and which attains in general a greater size, is only
found in high southern latitudes.
The family of Cetacea consists of three great genera: the manati and
dugong, which live in or near the estuaries of tropical rivers, are
herbivorous; the dolphins or porpoises, which are carnivorous, provided
with long jaws and numerous teeth, and are found in almost every
latitude and in every sea; and the whales, which, unprovided with
cutting teeth, are furnished with whalebone inserted in the upper jaw,
the extreme filaments of which are destined as a kind of net to catch
the minute marine animals which form their food. The marine Cetacea
breathe by an opening in the centre of the head, called, in whales, the
blower, corresponding to the nose of terrestrial quadrupeds, and which
also serves to expel the water taken into the mouth with the food, in
the form of jets, which, in the whale tribe, varies in height and form
according to the species.
The favorite haunts of the seal tribe are the polar oceans and desert
islands in high latitudes, where they bask in hundreds on the sunny
shores during the brief summer of these inhospitable regions, and become
an easy prey to man, who has nearly extirpated the race in many places.
A million are annually killed in the South Atlantic alone. Seven species
are natives of the Arctic, Atlantic, and Polar Oceans; the Greenland
seal, the bearded or great seal, and the Phoca leporina are found also
in the high latitudes of the Northern Pacific. The Phoca oceanica is
only in the White Sea and the sea at Nova Zembla, and the Phoca sagura
on the coast of Newfoundland. The sea-lion is to be found on all the
coasts of the South Pacific, but their principal gathering is on the
island of St. George, one of the Pruibiloff group, in lat. 56° N. The
common seal is 6 or 7 feet long, with a face like that of a dog, and a
large intelligent eye. It is easily tamed, and in the Orkney island it
is so much domesticated that it follows its master, and helps him to
catch fish. This seal migrates in herds from Greenland twice in the
year, and returns again to its former haunts; they probably come to the
coasts of Europe and the British islands at the time of their
migrations, but the Phoca vitulina is a constant inhabitant of our
shores. Some of the seal tribe have a very wide range, as the fur
species, Arctocephalus ursinus, of the Falkland islands, which at one
time frequented the southern coasts of New Holland in multitudes, but
they and three other species have now become scarce, from the
indiscriminate slaughter of old and young. Sir James Ross found some of
the islands in the Antarctic seas overrun with the sea-elephant, Phoca
elephantina, and they captured a new species of seal without external
ears. The Walrus, a grim-looking creature, with tusks 2 feet long, bent
downwards, and its nose covered with transparent bristles, has a body
like that of a seal, 20 feet long, with a coat of short grey or yellow
hair. It sleeps on the floating ice, feeds on sea-weed and marine
animals, and never leaves the Arctic seas.
The manati and dugong form the first group of the family of the Cetacea;
they are exclusively herbivorous, and inhabit near the mouths of the
great tropical rivers. The lamantin or manatus of two species is found
in the Amazon and Orinoco, and in some rivers of Western Africa. In the
former, where it is known as the sea-cow, its body is round like a
wine-bag, and sometimes attains a length of 12 or 15 feet; it browses in
herds on the herbage at the bottom of streams; and when attacked, the
mother defends her young at the sacrifice of her own life. The dugong is
an inhabitant of the eastern archipelago, and of the shallow parts of
the Indian Ocean, where it also feeds on sea-weed; it is more a marine
animal than the lamantin, as it is scarcely ever seen in fresh water.
The dugong is so harmless and tame as to allow itself to be handled.
When it suckles its young it sits upright, which has given rise to the
fable of the Mermaid. This animal, like the lamantin, will sacrifice its
life for its young, and is, hence, among the Malays, held as the type of
maternal affection. The animal called the Manatus septentrionalis, which
frequents the Arctic seas, is very little known, and probably not one of
the herbivorous Cetacea.
The second group or genus of the Cetacea consists of those of predatory
habits; they live on fish, and, consequently, have sharp and numerous
teeth, such as porpoises, dolphins, and spermaceti whales or Cachalots;
they have, like all the animals of this family, spouting nostrils in the
upper part of the head.[176] The common porpoise is seen spouting and
tumbling on the surface of all the seas of Europe; shoals of them go in
pursuit of herrings and mackerel, and even swim up the rivers in chase
of salmon. They have more the form of fish than the seal tribe, and have
a dorsal fin. The several species of Dolphins, so remarkable for their
voracity and for the swiftness of their motions, owing to the symmetry
of their form and the width of their horizontally-placed tail, are seen
in almost every latitude. The white dolphin, eaten by the Icelanders, is
18 feet long, and migrates from the Atlantic to Greenland in the end of
November. The Grampus, Delphinus Orca, nearly allied to the killer of
the South Sea whalers, is fierce and voracious, often 20 feet long,
roams in numerous shoals, preying upon the larger fish, and even
attacking the whale. The Grind or black dolphin has been known to run
ashore in hundreds in the bays of Feroe, Orkney, and Shetland. This
seems to be the same or nearly allied to the black fish which was met
with in vast numbers by Sir James Ross in the Antarctic seas: they had
so little fear, that they darted below the ship on one side and came up
at the other. The white porpoise, Delphinus peronii, of the southern
whalers, is a rare and elegant species of dolphin which chiefly inhabits
the high southern latitudes, but has been seen at the equator in the
Pacific. They are about six feet long, the hinder part of the head, the
back, and the flukes of their tail are black, and all the rest of the
purest white. The Narwhal, or sea-unicorn (Monodon monoceros), has no
teeth, but a tusk of fine ivory wreathed with a spiral groove extending
8 or 10 feet straight from the head; in general there is only one tusk,
but there are always the rudiments of another, and occasionally both
grow to an equal length. The old narwhals are white with blackish spots,
the young are dark-coloured. This singular creature, which is about
sixteen feet long without the tusks, swims with great swiftness. Mr.
Scoresby has seen 15 or 20 at a time playing round his ship in the
Arctic seas, and crossing their long tusks in all directions as if they
were fencing; they are found in all parts of the Northern Ocean.
The spermaceti whale, the Cachalot or Physeter Macrocephalus, belonging
to the family of the predaceous spouters, is one of the most formidable
inhabitants of the deep. Its average size is 60 feet long and 40 feet in
circumference; its head, equal to a third of its length, is extremely
thick and blunt in front, with a throat wide enough to swallow a man.
The proportionally small swimming paws or pectoral fins are at a short
distance behind the head, and the tail, which is a horizontal triangle 6
or 7 feet long, and 19 feet wide, with a notch between the flukes, is
the chief organ of progressive motion and defence. It has a hump of fat
on its back, is of a dark colour, but with a very smooth clean skin.
These sperm whales have two nostrils on the top of their head, through
which they throw, at each expiration, a succession of jets like smoke,
at intervals of 15 or 20 minutes, after which they toss their tails high
in the air and go head foremost to vast depths, where they remain for a
considerable time, and then return again to the surface to breathe. The
jet or spout is from 6 to 8 feet high, and consists of water mixed with
air, expired from the lungs. This whale has sperm-oil and spermaceti in
every part of its body, but the latter is chiefly in a vast reservoir in
its head, which makes it very buoyant, and ambergris is sometimes found
in the inside of the body, supposed to be the produce of disease. These
huge monsters, occasionally 75 feet long, go in great herds of 500 or
600, or schools, as the whalers call them. Females with their young, and
two or three old males, generally form one company, and the young males
another, while the old males feed and hunt singly. The sperm whales swim
gracefully and equally, with their head above the water; but when a
troop of them play on the surface of the water, some of these uncouth
and gigantic creatures leap with the agility of a salmon several feet
into the air, and fall down again heavily with a tremendous crash and
noise like a cannon, driving the water up in lofty columns capped with
foam. The fishery of the sperm whale is attended with great danger; not
only the wounded animal, but its companions who come to its aid,
sometimes fight desperately, killing the whalers and tossing them into
the air with a sweep of their tremendous tails, or biting a boat in two.
In 1820, the American whaler Essex was wrecked in the Pacific by a sperm
whale; it first gave the ship so severe a blow that it broke off part of
the keel, then, retreating to a distance, it rushed furiously, and with
its enormous head beat in a portion of the planks, and the people had
just time to save themselves in the boats when the vessel filled. They
often lie and listen when suspicious of mischief. No part of the aqueous
globe, except the Arctic seas, is free from their visits; they have been
seen in the Mediterranean and the Adriatic, in the British Channel, and
even in the estuary of the Thames, but their chief resort is the deepest
parts of the warmer seas within or near the tropics, and in the
Antarctic Ocean, where they feed on floating molluscæ, the sepia or
cuttle-fish, &c.
The second and last genus of the Cetacea are whalebone whales, such as
the Greenland whale and rorquals. Instead of teeth, the upper jaws of
these animals are furnished with plates and filaments of whalebone,
which are moveable, and are adapted to retain, as in a net, the medusæ
and other small marine animals that are the food of these colossal
inhabitants of the deep. The common Greenland species, Balæna
Mysticetus, was formerly much more numerous, but it is now chiefly
confined to the very high northern latitudes; however, should it be the
same with the whale found in such multitudes in shallow water on the
coasts of the Pacific and in the Antarctic Ocean by Sir James Ross, it
must have a very wide range, but it is more probable that each pole has
its own species. The Greenland whale is from 65 to 70 feet long, but
they are so much persecuted that they probably never live long enough to
come to their full size. The head is very large, but the opening of the
throat is so narrow that it can only swallow small animals. It has no
dorsal fin: the swimming paws are about nine feet long, and the flat
tail is half-moon shaped and notched in the middle. It has two spouts or
nostrils, through which it throws jets like puffs of smoke some yards
high. It only remains two or three minutes on the surface to breathe,
and then goes under water for five or six. The back and tail are
velvet-black, shaded in some places into grey, the rest is white: some
are piebald. The capture of this whale is often attended with much
cruelty, from their affection for their young; indeed the custom of
killing the calf in order to capture the mother has ruined the fishery
in several places, especially in New Zealand, where there were eight
species of whales in vast abundance.
Rorquals are also whalebone whales, differing from the common whale in
the more elongated form of the head. One species is from 80 to 100 feet
long, the largest of marine animals. The bottle-nosed whale, a smaller
species, was exceedingly numerous in the Arctic seas; in the year 1809,
1100 were stranded in Huel-fiord in Iceland. This whale travels to lower
latitudes in pursuit of herrings and other fish. It had been caught on
the coast of Norway as early as the year 890, and probably long before.
The first northern navigators were not attracted by the whale as an
object of commerce, but stumbled upon it in their search for a
north-west passage to the Pacific. The hump-backed whale, Balæna
gibbosa, a rorqual 30 or 40 feet long, is met with in small herds in the
intertropical and southern regions of the Pacific and Atlantic; it is
seldom molested by the whalers, and is very dangerous for boats, from
the habit it has of leaping and rising suddenly to the surface. None of
the senses of the whale tribe are very acute; the whalebone whales alone
have the sense of smelling, and, although the sperm whale is immediately
aware of a companion being harpooned at a very great distance, they do
not hear well in air, and none have voice.[177]
The existence of creatures in the ocean resembling enormous serpents has
been announced at different times for more than a century, but has never
been authentically established. Accounts of such monsters having been
seen in the northern seas, in the fiords of Norway and Sweden, had been
given to the world by Egede and Pantoppidan: by the latter more on
hearsay evidence than from his own observation. But, as in every
instance, the pretended sea-serpent was represented to possess either
the blow-holes of the Cetacea or the head and mane of a seal, it was
evident the credulity of our Scandinavian neighbours had converted some
well-known animals into the incomprehensible marine monsters of their
imagination. The same may be said of the sea-serpent represented to have
been stranded on one of the Orkney Islands in 1808, of which a part of a
skeleton is preserved in the Museum of the College of Surgeons, and
which, when examined by the naturalist, proved to belong to a large
species of shark; and of that fallen in with off the coast of Halifax in
1833, by some British officers engaged on a fishing expedition. The
existence of the sea-serpent was looked upon therefore as one of those
creations of that imaginative credulity, so frequently entertained by
ignorant seafaring persons, and had ceased to attract any attention
except occasionally by an illusion to it in some Transatlantic
newspaper; when it has been again revived by no less a person than the
commander of one of her Majesty’s ships, who has considered its
discovery by him to be worthy of a report to the Lords of the Admiralty.
The officer in question, Captain M’Quhae, of her Majesty’s ship Dædalus,
states that, on the 6th of August, 1848, being in lat. 24° 44ʹ S., long.
9° 22ʹ E., consequently not far from the south-western coast of Africa,
he descried in broad daylight, and at a short distance, an animal with
the head of a serpent and at least 60 feet long, passing his ship to the
south-westward at the rate of 15 miles an hour. Professor Owen, after a
careful and impartial consideration of all the details given of this
strange apparition, has shown to the satisfaction of every unbiassed
mind that the animals seen by the officers of the Dædalus was probably a
large species of southern seal, and perhaps the Otaria Proboscidea. The
genus Otaria is longer in proportion than our Arctic seals, and its fore
flappers being situated farther back, the neck of the animal becomes
longer, and is generally, in the act of swimming, raised out of the
water, as seen and represented by Captain M’Quhae in his drawing.
Professor Owen supposes that this seal had been carried from its usual
haunts in or near the Antarctic circle on an iceberg, which having
melted away in these middle latitudes, the animal was obliged to find
its way back by its own locomotive powers; an opinion rendered the more
likely, when we consider that it was making for the nearest land, where
such animals are known to live, Gough Island and Tristan d’Acunha, from
which it was distant about 1500 miles, or 4 days’ journey, at the rate
and in the direction it is represented by Captain M’Quhae to have been
progressing when seen from his ship. This statement of the appearance
therefore of the sea-serpent in 1848 adds nothing to our certainty as to
the existence of such monsters; whilst it shows how easy it is, for even
well-informed persons, to raise up imaginary beings out of animals
well-known to the naturalist. The general public, always fond of the
marvellous and extraordinary, is too prone to credit such stories, and
too ready to admit the existence of beings, however opposed to all the
known laws of organic co-existences. To persons ready to give credit to
the assertions of those ignorant of the first principles of zoology, it
would be a loss of time for the naturalist to endeavour to explain how
impossible it is that the head and jaws of a serpent, with the skin and
mane of a seal, and the blow-hole of a porpoise, could ever be found
united in the same animal. As well might one try to reason with a
believer in ghosts and fairies on the non-existence of those creations
of a disordered imagination.