here, and can tell the folks that we've seen a real live whale!"
"Lucy," said he, "this city is full of all kinds of cheats, an' I
don't believe that thing is alive more'n Methuselah is; it's some
indy-rubber contraption with clockwork in it that makes it go round
and puff in that way."
After the season for hatching trout and salmon was over, in April, I
was detailed to build a branch aquarium at Coney Island, with
instructions to construct a whale tank the first thing, in order to be
ready for the next arrivals. I employed a maker of beer vats, and he
brought three-inch planks for the bottom, staves eight feet high, and
iron for hoops. The tank was to be twenty-five feet in diameter, with
a "chime" nine inches below the bottom, making the tank seven feet
deep inside. It was to set with its top eighteen inches above the
soil, which was to be the water line, giving the whales five feet and
a half of water--little enough when we realize that a ten-foot animal
has a diameter of nearly three feet. Heavy timbers were laid under the
bottom of the tank, carefully leveled, for no weight can be borne by
the staves in a tank of that size.
All this was planned, as well as the engine and pumps, and was well
under way, when I received an order from Mr. Coup to go to Quebec and
bring down two whales while Zach. went for more. Then I learned the
secrets of the live white whale trade. The first whale had been kept
back until it could be delivered at night, and its transportation was
a mystery intended to arouse the curiosity of the public.
At the railroad station at Quebec two boxes were turned over to me.
They were about fifteen feet long, four feet wide, and four feet deep.
They were upholstered with "bladder wrack," a most soft cushion, and
in each box a white whale lay on these pneumatic cushions. A plug in
the bottom of each box had let the water out while the boxes were
being lifted by the rope handles on the sides, but when on the cars
the plugs were replaced and water to the depth of a foot was poured
in; this served to keep the under parts moist, while frequent sponging
or the use of a dipper served to keep the skin from drying. The
nostril, or "blow-hole," needed the most attention, for it has a valve
which must not be allowed to get even partially dry, and a saturated
sponge was kept suspended over this all the time during the journey by
rail to New York.
The white whale is a very timid animal, and comes up the St. Lawrence
in May and June, when the young are brought forth; it is believed that
they then go to the river to avoid their enemies, among which is the
"killer" or orca whale. Their food, according to Professor Goode, is
"bottom fish, like flounders and halibut, cod, haddock, salmon,
squids, and prawns." From my knowledge of this whale in confinement I
am surprised at the above list, for those under my observation not
only preferred live eels, but could not swallow one whose diameter was
over one inch, and it was difficult to get quantities of eels as small
as three quarters of an inch in diameter, especially when an adult
whale would consume about twenty pounds in a day. When larger eels
were placed in the tank they would be taken out dead in a day or two
with their sides scratched and torn by the small teeth of the whale
which had failed to swallow it. We tried other food, for eels are
quite expensive in New York city, costing fifteen and eighteen cents
per pound, but the whales refused small flatfish, flounders, etc., and
the only other food they ate was small tomcods. They refused dead
herrings and all fish that were cut in pieces.
The animals are captured at the small French fishing village of
Rivière l'Ouelle, on Isle aux Coudres, seventy miles below Quebec,
where life is as primitive as it was two hundred years ago in this,
one of the oldest of Canadian settlements. Luke Tilden, one of our
aquarium men, who went up with Zach. Coup, told of the capture of the
whales, and the following is from notes taken by me as Luke told it:
The men all fish and the women do a little gardening, but their
harvest is the marsouin, a name common to the white whale and to the
black porpoise. A fair white whale will weight eight hundred pounds
and yield nearly one hundred gallons of oil worth fifty cents per
gallon, so that when they trap twenty in a season it means prosperity
to the colony; in 1874 they took one hundred, but the catch has fallen
off since. "When we reached the island," said Luke, "we went straight
to Father Alixe Pelletier and donated ten dollars to the Church for
prayers for our success, and it was well invested. The good old man
is the head of that colony and keeps everything straight. In 1863
there was an epidemic of indifference to the Church, and the men went
to the bad, got drunk, fought, fished on Sundays, and reviled the
priest, withholding all dues to him. Then he said, 'God is angry with
you, and to punish you will send no more marsouin until you repent.'
They laughed at him, and for three years no marsouin came to them, and
they were very poor. They went to the father on a Christmas day and
implored him to intercede for them, and he did. The next spring there
was a great catch of marsouin, and the men have remained faithful
since.
"The tides here rise and fall some twenty feet, and the whales are
trapped in an inclosure made of poles, the entrance to which is closed
when a school enters. The pound is about a mile square, and is made of
slim poles put two feet apart, space enough to let a whale through,
but they will not attempt it. The tide falls and leaves them on the
mud, quaking with fear. When we want live ones the boxes are made,
padded with seaweed, shoved out over the mud, tipped on one side, and
the whale rolled into it, where its struggles soon put it on an even
keel, and then it gives up and does nothing but breathe as the boxes
are taken on board a schooner for Quebec."
I was fortunate in getting the above story from Luke Tilden, for a few
weeks afterward he died in the aquarium; and Zach. Coup would tell
nothing that could be relied on, not even to the locality where the
whales were caught.
The white whale is the only one of its tribe that can be captured in
the manner related, because of its cowardly timidity. The harbor
porpoise, or "herring-hog," would jump nets and break barricades or
die. It would not bear the confinement of an aquarium, for it would
leap out of the tanks or dash its brains out in trying to do so; but,
once placed in a tank of either salt or fresh water, the white whale
starts to circle it, always to the left, with the sun, and contentedly
blows at intervals of from five to fifteen minutes, and seems as
contented as a canary bird in its cage.
The whale does not always swim in circles to the left when free, and
why it does so in confinement is a question. I merely assert the fact.
Perhaps wiser men know why perfectly still water in a washbowl will
rotate to the left with an accelerated motion when the plug is
withdrawn, but I do not. As the motion to the left is invariable there
must be a rule for it, but, granting that this motion has some
relation to the motion of the earth, the question of how this affects
the voluntary movements of an animal remains to be answered. I have
watched over a dozen white whales in captivity, dumped into tanks from
the most convenient side without regard to the direction of their
heads, and every one turned and circled to the left. The question
arises, Why do they do this? At the new aquarium now at Battery Park,
New York city, the big sturgeon always circles to the left except when
feeding.
The two whales at Coney Island were good-sized ones, nearly ten feet
long, and they raced around, side by side, and played for nearly two
hours before they began to take the eels which had been in the tank
several days, although the large mammals had been without food for at
least seven days. On the way down I had noticed a difference in the
sound of their breathing, that of the female being sharp and clear,
while her mate seemed to have a hoarseness, and occasionally gave
something like a cough. I called attention to this and told Mr. Coup
that the animal had some lung trouble. He consulted a man who
professed to know about these animals, and then reported his opinion
that the cough was nothing to fear, "merely a little water in the
blow-hole."
"This may be true," I replied; "I'm not a medical man, but I've heard
many consumptives cough, and that whale imitates them. I doubt if it
lives a month."
It lived just twenty-six days after its arrival at Coney Island. The
last five days of its life it took no food, and its labored breathing
was annoying to all who knew the cause of it. Then came a touching
display of affection. The female slackened her pace day by day to
accommodate it to that of her constantly weakening companion, and as
the end neared she put her broad transverse tail under his and
propelled him along. He stopped breathing at 10 A. M., but his mate
kept up her efforts, occasionally making a swift run around the tank,
as if to say, "Come, follow me," and then slowing up at his side,
resumed the work of sculling him along, as before. Rude men expressed
pity for the living one, and after my men had rigged a derrick and
hoisted her mate from the pool she would rise higher out of water when
she came up to blow, remembering that he had gone out over the top of
the tank. An autopsy by local physicians, whose names have been
forgotten, assisted by a medical student then in my employ, now Dr. J.
R. Latham, 126 West Eleventh Street, New York city, disclosed the fact
that the whale died of pneumonia.
A white whale which reached the Broadway aquarium about July 1st,
after mine came, lived seven months, dying January 28, 1878. My whale
was either diseased when captured or took a cold at Isle aux Coudres.
The New York one was sound all summer, and I told Mr. Coup that it
might live for years, but the artificial heat of the aquarium in
winter was not what a subarctic animal could endure, and it succumbed
as most of Peary's Eskimos did in New York last winter. The autopsy on
this whale was performed by Dr. F. D. Weisse, professor of practical
and surgical anatomy of the medical department of the University of
the City of New York, assisted by Prof. J. W. I. Arnold, of the same
university, and Dr. Liautard, superintendent of the Veterinary
College. They agreed that pneumonia was the cause of death, induced by
a change of temperature of the water in which the animal had been
kept. The official measurements of this female specimen, whose organs
were kept in the two institutions named, were: nine feet six inches
from snout to tail tips; three feet between tips of caudal fins, with
a body breadth of twenty inches and a head breadth of thirteen inches.
The lungs, weighing twenty-two pounds, presented on dissection the
appearance of having been affected with chronic catarrhal pneumonia.
The liver weighed nineteen pounds. The four stomachs were all free
from any trace of previous disease.
In looking up the life history of the white whale when opportunity
offered, during the last twenty years I have consulted many old
whalemen, and they all say that whales of all kinds take their babies
on their flukes and scull them along as my female sculled her dying
and dead partner. This must be a fact, for the little one could never
swim with its parent. But another question arises: Is this purely a
female instinct to provide for its young, which was, in the case of my
pair, developed into a desire to preserve a companion? or, in other
words, would a male have done this, or would a female have done it if
she were free and had other companions? Was it love for her mate, or a
feeling of selfishness at her lonely position? My female was afterward
sent to England in the old transportation box, and was nine days
without food, for they will not swallow food in transit, and it lived
four days in London, clearing more than enough to pay for the animal
and all expenses.
When the free aquarium at Battery Park, New York city, was opened,
December 10, 1896, there was talk of getting white whales the next
spring, but there was no way to employ men to go for them at a stated
salary, as they would have to pass a civil-service examination and
become regularly appointed employees of the city. In this emergency
Mr. Eugene G. Blackford came forward and advanced the money for the
expedition, and it started early in May. On June 4th Professor Butler
delivered a pair of them to the superintendent, Dr. Bean. I was aware
of their coming, and was at the aquarium, and so was Dr. Latham. The
male was lead-colored, was said to be a year and a half old, and was
nine feet long. The female was of the usual cream-color, ten feet and
a half long, and was said to be a year older than her mate. It is
known that young and immature specimens are darker than adults, but I
am skeptical about the ages, especially as there is a half year
credited to each at the exact time the young are brought forth, and do
not know on what the ages are based further than that the young are
darker in color for a time.
"How does the breathing of the big one sound to you?" the doctor
asked.
"Like ours at Coney Island that died from lung trouble," I replied,
"and I would not have brought that animal down unless it was the only
one to be had during the season."
"I think I'll give her about ten days to live," replied the doctor.
As these were not my whales, I declined to talk of their prospects of
life to several reporters who knew me, and the whale in question died
of pneumonia on June 11th, just a week after its arrival in New York,
and several days before the trained ear of Dr. Latham had allotted its
span of life.
The male came to its death by an accident at 9 P. M. on June 24th,
just twenty days after arrival. An eel got into its blow-hole and it
drowned. According to an account published in the New York Sun of
Monday, July 26, 1897, said to be obtained from Dr. Tarleton H. Bean,
director of the aquarium, the whale "was as healthy a one as ever
spouted until late on Friday afternoon, the 24th, when one of the
keepers noticed that something was wrong. His attention was attracted
by the loud wheezing that accompanied each blow that the whale made
when he came up for air. The wheezing could be heard all over the
aquarium. Dr. Bean was sent for. He was certain that the whale's lungs
were all right. He cited a fact, known to the custodian and to all the
keepers, that the mammal for the past month had remained under water a
little longer after he came to the surface to blow. This convinced Dr.
Bean that the whale's lungs were sound and that some other cause of
illness must be found."
Then the whale coughed out a piece of an eel that it had bit in two,
and as it came up to blow again there was another piece hanging from
the blow-hole which could not shut, and so let water into the lungs.
Dr. Bean ordered the water drawn off the tank in order to get at the
animal, but a former superintendent, who had planned the tanks, had
put in such small drainage pipes that by the time the water was drawn
down so that the men could get at the whale it was dead.
I do not believe that a white whale lived two years in Boston, because
this subarctic animal could not endure the extremes of Boston's
temperatures without contracting lung disease in some form. Think of
such an animal living through climatic conditions that an Eskimo can
not stand, and in a public institution where thousands of people are
vitiating the air!
Animals which live wholly in water are more susceptible to changes of
temperature than those which live on land. The white whale can be kept
the year round in New York city if it can have a refrigerating plant
to give it the temperature which it needs, and proper food.
We bring polar bears to New York which suffer in summer, if not in our
comparatively mild winters, and tropical animals which barely survive,
but these land mammals are not so susceptible to climatic influences
as are the fishes and the purely aquatic mammals, like the whales.
These can never be kept long by the crude means which have been
employed. From the purest air they have been changed to the more or
less vitiated air where thousands of human beings are crowded and in a
temperature which is unnatural. If we would keep them we must give
them better chances for living than in open tanks in the summer
temperature of New York.
UNUSUAL FORMS IN PLANTS.
BY BYRON D. HALSTED.
The unexpected is apt to occur. Along with the regularity in living
things, which we call "uniformity of Nature," there is so strong a
tendency to vary that one almost expects to find a turn in the avenues
of life sooner or later, and that gradual or sudden, as the case may
be. We will not stop to discuss the open question of whether we are
possessed by an inherent quality of variation, or as creatures of
circumstances, subject to the controlling forces of our environment.
Yesterday while looking at a row of seedling peaches, all from the
same lot of pits, one of the miniature trees was found to be bronze or
copper colored throughout. This set me to thinking. Here was a
"sport," as it is termed, and if I take good care of the abnormity,
bud it into common stock, etc., the landscape architects and
ornamental gardeners may thank me for the novelty that will please
their wealthy patrons.
Leaving aside the abnormal as met with in the animal world, for much
of it is more painful than otherwise to contemplate, let us glance at
some of the unusual things occurring among plants.
One first thinks of some strange forms in leaf, and if the eyes are
opened to them they may be met with upon every hand. The "four-leaf"
clover is lucky perhaps only because the finder is sharper-eyed than
others, and stands a brighter chance of seeing success as it crouches
almost invisible in the wild grass, the tilled field, or wherever the
eyes may be set to find it.
The child who brings me the oddities of vegetable forms is knowing in
the normals of his class of curiosities, or else he would not see the
novelties from the finding and exhibiting of which he gains so much
pleasure. The person who is familiar with the striking beauty of the
cardinal flower (_Lobelia cardinalis_) is the one who rejoices at the
variations that may occur in the tints of the bright corolla. His
delight would reach a high pitch should the conspicuous spikes be
found upon dry ground, and not by the bank of some stream half hidden
by the overhanging grass. But should the wandering plant display white
flowers, then an albino of a most interesting kind has been met with,
and some reason for it is sought in the unusual locality. Only a few
days ago a white variation of the _Lobelia syphilitica_, cousin to the
cardinal, was seen by the writer treasured in the Botanical Garden at
Cambridge, Mass., and it called to mind the rage for pink water
lilies, that twenty years ago were only met with wild in ponds at
Plymouth, Mass. I asked an expert recently if there was any call for
the pink or "Plymouth" lilies, and he informed me that the fad had
died out with the transplanting and widespread culture of the pink
"sports" of the nymphæa ponds.
Abnormal colors in flowers are among the most common freaks in wild
plants, and none are more frequent than the albinos. One could fill a
page with instances of this sort. Some of our most common weeds, as
the moth mullein (_Verbascum blattaria_), have a large percentage of
the plants with white blossoms, and the patches of the white
interspersed with the normal yellow-flowered plants in poorly kept
meadows and neglected land has led the writer to gather seed of each
to test the truth of the opinion that the white strain may be
transmitted to the offspring, but the proof is not yet at hand.
The writer knows where there is a patch of the hound's tongue
(_Echinospermum_) with a good sprinkling of plants producing white
corollas instead of the normal deep maroon. The two colors make a good
subject for students who are gaining an elementary knowledge of the
stability of species, and the range of striking variations that must
be allowed for them.
Next to the albinos the instances where the floral parts approach
leaves in size and color are the most common. A few weeks ago while
passing through a field once devoted to corn, but now overgrown with
weeds, and therefore of special interest to a botanist, my eyes fell
upon a daisy plant all the heads of which were with olive-green ray
flowers instead of the ordinary pure white ones. These rays were
smaller than the normal and quite inclined to roll, as shown in Fig.
1, and form quills, as seen in some of the fancy chrysanthemums. By
the way, our common field daisy is a genuine chrysanthemum, and that
which is produced in one species under the guiding, fostering hand of
the skilled gardener was here shadowed forth in the field of waste
land.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--GREEN AND NORMAL OXEYE DAISY HEADS.]
A week or so later, while going through a similar field in an
adjoining county to the one where the daisy freak was found, I came
upon nearly the same thing as seen in the heads of the "black-eyed
Susan," or cone flower (_Rudbeckia hirta_ L.). Here were the two
leading weedy daisies, the white and the yellow, the former coming to
our fields from the East and across the sea, while the latter, as a
native of our Western prairies, journeys to make a home here and help
to compensate by its pestiferous presence for the vile weeds that have
gone West with the advance of civilization. Both of these daisies
revealed that tendency in them to vary in their floral structures that
if made use of by the floriculturist might result in forms and colors
as attractive and profitable as met with in their cousins the
chrysanthemums of the Orient.
Perhaps the season which we have had, with its excess of moisture and
superheat, has made the abnormal forms more abundant than usual. The
even current of life has been met by counter streams, so to say, and
the channels were broken down. In walking through a meadow in early
June it was a common thing to find the spikes of the narrow-leaved
plantain (_Plantago lanceolata_ L.) branched and compounded into
curious shapes. Some of the normal and malformed spikes are shown in
Fig. 2.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--MALFORMED HEADS OF PLANTAGO LANCEOLATA.]
As a tailpiece to this portion of the subject it is a pleasure to
introduce a freak among the native orchards, as shown in Fig. 3. A
word of explanation is needed of the normal form of the lady's slipper
here shown. As found in the moist woods, the plant above ground
consists of two leaves and a single pink and strange-looking blossom
terminating the stalk. This is the rule, and it has been strictly
adhered to, so far as the writer knows, for centuries with a single
exception, and that exception is the one here presented. It is as
remarkable as a double-headed dog, and as difficult of explanation as
the twin thumb.
Perhaps the best way is to make no attempt to account for the freak,
and leave the subject open for those who have a gift of insight into
the secrets of the abnormal and the unexpected. Other species of
cypripediums regularly bear more than one flower; this one may have
done so in former ages, and here is the link that binds our pretty
unifloral species to its remote and possibly extinct ancestor. On the
other hand, a double-flowered form is possibly in embryo, and before
the next century closes the _Cypripedium acaule_ Ait. may need to have
its description changed so as to embrace two flowers.
The influence of moisture, heat, and light is very great upon
vegetation, and one only needs to observe the same species of plant as
grown in a moist, shady place, as compared with the ones that are
located in the full sun where the soil is dry. Size and shape of
parts, and even their color and the surface, are different, and this
all leads us up to the cultivated plants where variation is the rule
and constancy the exception.