proved so productive, is almost played out, but that of Davis Straits
and Lancaster Sound is still remunerative, owing to the very high price
that whalebone has lately been fetching. At the beginning of the century
the average value was from £70 to £90 a ton, but a few years ago a sale
was effected at the enormous sum of £2650 per ton; this is the highest
price which has ever been given for it, and recently it has somewhat
declined. In 1893 four Dundee vessels secured between them twenty-seven
whales. An average-sized Greenland whale will produce about fifteen
hundredweight of whalebone and about fifteen tons of oil. The Greenland
fishery begins early in May, and goes on to the end of September. A few
vessels remain all winter in Cumberland Inlet, ready to take advantage
of the opening of the ice in the following spring. The Arctic right
whale, called locally by the American whalers the “bowhead,” has since
1848 been regularly hunted in the neighbourhood of Behring Strait and
the Okhotsk Sea, where its southern limit, according to Scammon, is
about 54°.
Although doubtless individual sperm whales approaching near the shore,
especially in the neighbourhood of the right whale fisheries, had often
fallen a prey to man, the systematic capture of this species is of
recent date compared to that of some other kinds. It began about the end
of the seventeenth century, from the Atlantic coasts of North America,
especially the part then called New England, at first only from the
shore, but afterwards in sea-going vessels from Nantucket, New Bedford,
and other ports, which gradually extended their voyages into the Indian
and Pacific Oceans. From the year 1775 vessels engaged in this trade
(assisted for a time by Government bounties) regularly left the mouth of
the Thames for the South Seas, making voyages of three or four years’
duration; but since 1853 the business has been abandoned by the English,
and what little remains of it has almost entirely reverted into the
hands of the Americans. At one time our Australian Colonies had a
considerable number of ships engaged in the sperm whale fishery, and a
few still sail every year from Hobart Town. Sperm oil has fallen so
greatly in price that its production is now hardly a remunerative
industry, and it has found a rival, possessing all the qualities which
render it of special value, in the oil of an allied but much smaller
species of whale, the bottlenose (_Hyperoodon_), which has consequently
become the object of a regular fishery in the North Sea, especially by
the Norwegians.
Let me now return to the whales of the Basques, the North Atlantic right
whale. It is a singular fact that its existence was quite overlooked by
naturalists till lately, all accounts of it which are to be found in the
numerous records of European whale fishing having been attributed to the
Greenland whale, which was supposed by Cuvier, for instance, to have had
formerly a much wider distribution than now, and to have been driven by
the persecution of man to its present circumpolar haunts. To the two
Danish naturalists Eschricht and Reinhardt is due the credit of having
proved its existence as a distinct species from a careful collation of
numerous historical notices of its structure, distribution, and habits,
and, although they were at one time disposed to think that the species
had become extinct, they were able to show that this was not the case,
an actual specimen having been captured in the harbour of San Sebastian
in January 1854, the skeleton of which Eschricht was fortunate enough to
secure for the Copenhagen Museum. More recently other specimens have
been captured on the Spanish coast, the Mediterranean, North America,
and Norway. A skeleton has fortunately been secured for the British
Museum, the exhibition of which is only delayed by the want of a proper
room in which it can be mounted. In the North Pacific a very similar if
not identical whale is regularly hunted by the Japanese, who tow the
carcasses ashore for the purpose of flensing and extracting the
whalebone. In the tropical seas, according to Captain Maury’s whale
charts, right whales are never or rarely seen, but when the southern
temperate seas were explored, they were found to be abundantly inhabited
by right whales called “black whales,” so closely similar in character
to the Atlantic and Japanese species that, although described and named
as if distinct, at present no satisfactory and constant characters have
been pointed out by which they can be separated. Of course this may
arise from our very imperfect knowledge of these animals, very few
specimens[36] having been preserved in museums, and still fewer accurate
descriptions and drawings have been made of recently killed individuals,
notwithstanding the hundreds of thousands which have been slaughtered
from British and American ships during the present century. Just as its
northern representative approached the coasts during the winter, and
left for the open seas in the summer months, so these southern whales
resorted to the bays and inlets of the Cape of Good Hope, Australia, and
New Zealand during the southern winter (May to October), and departed
for higher latitudes during the remainder of the year.
Though certain numbers of the southern right whales were caught in the
open sea by American or Colonial ships engaged mainly in the sperm whale
fishery, the principal fishery at one time, as remunerative to those who
pursued it as it was destructive to the whales, was carried on from the
shore, at first at the Cape, then in Australia and Tasmania, and more
recently in New Zealand. Of the latter we have very detailed accounts in
many contemporary works, Wakefield, Dieffenbach, and others, and a good
epitome of its history will be found in Sherrin’s _Handbook of the
Fishery of New Zealand_ (1886). Whaling vessels from America and England
were in the habit of visiting the New Zealand seas for the purposes of
their trade ever since the beginning of the century, but the first shore
station was established in 1827 at Preservation Inlet, near the south
end of the Middle Island, and in a few years there were twelve stations
between that place and Banks Peninsula. In 1833 Messrs. G. and E.
Weller, merchants, of Sydney, founded a whaling establishment at Otago,
which was for a short time the most successful and important of any on
the coast. In 1834 the whales caught yielded 310 tons of oil, besides
bone, and for several years there were on this station from seventy-five
to eighty Europeans constantly employed. In 1840 the oil fell off to
fourteen tons, and the fishery was abandoned. The value of “black oil”
at this time was £8 to £12 a ton in New Zealand, and as much as £30 in
London. In other parts of the islands the fishery was continued for a
longer period. It is stated that in 1843 the whale fishery on the whole
of the coast employed eighty-five boats and some 730 men, and the oil
taken amounted to 1290 tons, valued at £20,000, the whalebone being
valued at £12,000. After this period the decline in the take became very
rapid, and the stations with their great shears for hoisting the bodies
of the whales on shore for the purpose of flensing, the furnaces and
boiling pots for “trying out” the oil, and the bold and hardy, but
unhappily rough and dissolute, inhabitants entirely disappeared from the
scene. The cause of this is not difficult to divine. The result was
fully anticipated by all who carefully observed what was going on.
Almost literally the goose that laid the golden egg was being killed.
The whales appeared in the month of May and remained till October. Those
that approached nearest to the coast and were the easiest prey to the
fishermen were females about to bring forth their young. It was the
regular habit of this species of whale to seek at this season some
quiet, sheltered harbour, bay, or inlet, and there to remain with the
new-born young, until it acquired strength and vigour enough to take
care of itself in the open sea. The very affection of the whale for her
young thus became the principal cause of its destruction. The whalers
soon discovered that if the calf (as they called it) was wounded or
caught the mother would never leave it, and they found that the calf,
though of no value in itself, being inexperienced and slow, was easily
captured, and then the mother became a sure prey. To the old code,
regulating the northern whale fisheries, which assigned the whale to the
boat which first fixed a harpoon securely in it, they added: “The boat
making fast to a calf has a right to the cow, because the cow will not
desert her young.” It should be added that strong protests were made
against this cruel and in the end unprofitable mode of capture, but they
all passed unheeded. The result has been to the southern right whale
much the same as that which happened to its Atlantic ally after its
persecution by the Basques, although it was brought about in a much
shorter space of time. The whale not only became scarce on the New
Zealand coasts, but in all parts of its range. To destroy it in its last
remaining breeding haunts was to destroy it everywhere. Although we have
at present, unfortunately, very little accurate information about the
habits and migrations of whales, there is every reason to believe that
in the Antarctic summer this species retired nearer the South Pole. Sir
James C. Ross in 1840, in lat. 64°, nearly due south of New Zealand, and
again in 1842 in nearly the same latitude, south of the Falkland
Islands, found right whales very abundant in the month of December. On
the strength of this observation it has been thought that a whale
corresponding to the Arctic right whale might be a permanent inhabitant
of the Antarctic icy seas. Two years ago some ships sailed from Dundee
in the hope of meeting with it, but they were completely disappointed.
No trace of such whales was found, for doubtless Sir James Ross had only
come across the summer haunts of the same whales which were then
undergoing the process of ruthless extermination in their winter
breeding places on the Australian and New Zealand coasts. Such having
been the fate of this species, and the sperm whale not being habitually
found in icy seas, the probability of any large whale being again met
with in the Antarctic regions is very remote.
Our Colonial whale fisheries are practically extinct, probably never to
be revived, at all events with anything like the success they met with
formerly. Not that any species of whale is likely to be completely
exterminated by man. It is only too easy to exterminate an animal whose
habitat is confined to land, especially if that land is of limited
extent, as in the case of an island; but the ocean is vast, and the
possibilities of escape from pursuers in it are great. When the numbers
of any species become so small that it no longer pays to hunt them, they
have a chance, as has been most strikingly shown in the case of the
North Atlantic or Biscay whale. Without doubt, they would increase again
in the southern seas, and if means could be taken to give the whale an
effectual close time, the Australian and New Zealand black-whale fishery
could be revived, as it has been partially in Tasmania; but the
difficulty and expense of establishing any sufficient protection would
probably be greater than the value of the produce. Although the better
qualities of whalebone still maintain a very high price, owing to their
great scarcity, substitutes for it are being gradually invented, and the
competition of mineral oils, now found in such abundance in so many
parts of the world, and the rapid advances of other methods of lighting
have greatly reduced the value of both sperm and train oil. Unless
whales can be caught easily and cheaply, they will not be worth catching
at all; and this indicates their best chance of maintaining their place
in the world, as experience shows that if any profit can be made out of
them, the cupidity of man will give them no quarter.
XV
ON WHALES, PAST AND PRESENT, AND THEIR PROBABLE ORIGIN[37]
Few natural groups present so many remarkable, very obvious, and easily
appreciated illustrations of several of the most important general laws
which appear to have determined the structure of animal bodies, as that
selected for my lecture this evening. We shall find the effects of the
two opposing forces--that of heredity or conformation to ancestral
characters, and that of adaptation to changed environment,
whether brought about by the method of natural selection or
otherwise--distinctly written in almost every part of their structure.
Scarcely anywhere in the animal kingdom do we see so many cases of the
persistence of rudimentary and apparently useless organs, those
marvellous and suggestive phenomena which at one time seemed hopeless
enigmas, causing despair to those who tried to unravel their meaning,
looked upon as mere will-of-the-wisps, but now eagerly welcomed as
beacons of true light, casting illuminating beams upon the dark and
otherwise impenetrable paths through which the organism has travelled on
its way to reach the goal of its present condition of existence.
It is chiefly to these rudimentary organs of the Cetacea and to what we
may learn from them that I propose to call your attention. In each case
the question may well be asked, granted that they are, as they appear to
be, useless, or nearly so, to their present possessors, insignificant,
imperfect, in fact _rudimentary_, as compared with the corresponding or
homologous parts of other animals, are they survivals, or vestiges of a
past condition, become useless owing to change of circumstances and
environment, and undergoing the process of gradual degeneration,
preparatory to their final removal from an organism to which they are
only, in however small a degree, an incumbrance, or are they incipient
structures, beginnings of what may in future become functional and
important parts of the economy? These questions will call for an attempt
at least at solution in each case as we proceed.
Before entering upon details, it will be necessary to give some general
idea of the position, limits, and principal modifications of the group
of animals from which the special illustrations will be drawn. The term
“whale” is commonly but vaguely applied to all the larger and
middle-sized Cetacea, and though such smaller species as the dolphins
and porpoises are not usually spoken of as whales, they may for all
intents and purposes of zoological science be included in the term, and
will come within the range of the present subject. Taken altogether the
_Cetacea_ constitute a perfectly distinct and natural order of mammals,
characterised by their purely aquatic mode of life and external fishlike
form. The body is fusiform, passing anteriorly into the head without any
distinct constriction or neck, and posteriorly tapering off gradually
towards the extremity of the tail, which is provided with a pair of
lateral pointed expansions of skin supported by dense fibrous tissue,
called “flukes,” forming together a horizontally-placed, triangular
propelling organ. The fore-limbs are reduced to the condition of
flattened ovoid paddles, incased in a continuous integument, showing no
external sign of division into arm, forearm, and hand, or of separate
digits, and without any trace of nails. There are no vestiges of
hind-limbs visible externally. The general surface of the body is smooth
and glistening, and devoid of hair. In nearly all species a compressed
median dorsal fin is present. The nostrils open separately or by a
single crescentic valvular aperture, not at the extremity of the snout,
but near the vertex.
Animals of the order _Cetacea_ abound in all known seas, and some
species are inhabitants of the larger rivers of South America and Asia.
Their organisation necessitates their life being passed entirely in the
water, as on the land they are absolutely helpless; but they have to
rise very frequently to the surface for the purpose of respiration. They
are all predaceous, subsisting on living animal food of some kind. The
members of one genus alone (_Orca_) eat other warm-blooded animals, as
seals and even animals of their own order, both large and small. Some
feed on fish, others on small floating crustacea, pteropods, and medusæ,
while the staple food of many is constituted of the various species of
Cephalopods, chiefly _Loligo_ and other _Teuthidæ_, which must abound in
some seas in vast numbers, as they form almost the entire support of
some of the largest members of the order. The Cetacea are, with some
exceptions, timid, inoffensive animals. They are active in their
movements, and sociable and gregarious in their habits.
Among the existing members of the order there are two very distinct
types--the toothed whales, or _Odontoceti_, and the baleen whales, or
_Mystacoceti_, which present throughout their organisation most markedly
distinct structural characters, and have in the existing state of nature
no transitional forms. The extinct _Zeuglodon_, so far as its characters
are known, does not fall into either of these groups as now constituted,
but is in some respects intermediate, and in others more resembles the
generalised mammalian type.
The important and interesting problems of the origin of the Cetacea and
their relations to other forms of life are at present involved in the
greatest obscurity. They present no more signs of affinity with any of
the lower classes of vertebrated animals than do many of the members of
their own class. Indeed, in all that essentially distinguishes a mammal
from one of the oviparous vertebrates, whether in the osseous, nervous,
vascular, or reproductive systems, they are as truly mammalian as any,
even the highest, members of the class. Any supposed signs of
inferiority are, as we shall see, simply modifications in adaptation to
their peculiar mode of life. Similar modifications are met with in
another quite distinct group of mammalia, the _Sirenia_ (Dugongs and
Manatees), and also, though in a less complete degree, in the aquatic
Carnivora or seals. But these do not indicate any community of origin
between these groups and the Cetacea. In fact, in the present state of
our knowledge, the Cetacea are absolutely isolated, and little
satisfactory reason has ever been given for deriving them from any one
of the existing divisions of the class rather than from any other. The
question has indeed often been mooted whether they have been derived
from land mammals at all, or whether they may not be the survivors of a
primitive aquatic form which was the ancestor not only of the whales,
but of all the other members of the class. The materials for--I will not
say solving--but for throwing some light upon this problem, must be
sought for in two directions--in the structure of the existing members
of the order, and in its past history, as revealed by the discovery of
fossil remains. In the present state of science it is chiefly on the
former that we have to rely, and this therefore will first occupy our
attention.
One of the most obvious external characteristics by which the mammalia
are distinguished from other classes of vertebrates is the more or less
complete clothing of the surface by the peculiar modification of
epidermic tissue called hair. The Cetacea alone appear to be exceptions
to this generalisation. Their smooth, glistening exterior is, in the
greater number of species, at all events in adult life, absolutely bare,
though the want of a hairy covering is compensated for functionally by
peculiar modifications of the structure of the skin itself, the
epidermis being greatly thickened, and a remarkable layer of dense fat
being closely incorporated with the tissue of the derm or true skin;
modifications admirably adapted for retaining the warmth of the body,
without any roughness of surface which might occasion friction and so
interfere with perfect facility of gliding through the water. Close
examination, however, shows that the mammalian character of hairiness is
not entirely wanting in the Cetacea, although it is reduced to a most
rudimentary and apparently functionless condition. Scattered, small, and
generally delicate hairs have been detected in many species, both of the
toothed and of the whalebone whales, but never in any situation but on
the face, either in a row along the upper lip, around the blowholes or
on the chin, apparently representing the large, stiff “vibrissæ” or
“whiskers” found in corresponding situations in many land mammals. In
some cases these seem to persist throughout the life of the animal;
more often they are only found in the young or even the fœtal state. In
some species they have not been detected at any age.
Eschricht and Reinhardt counted in a new-born Greenland right whale
(_Balæna mysticetus_) sixty-six hairs near the extremity of the upper
jaw, and about fifty on each side of the lower lip, as well as a few
around the blowholes, where they have also been seen in _Megaptera
longimana_ and _Balænoptera rostrata_. In a large rorqual (_Balænoptera
musculus_), quite adult and sixty-seven feet in length, stranded in
Pevensey Bay in 1865, there were twenty-five white, straight, stiff
hairs about half an inch in length, scattered somewhat irregularly on
each side of the vertical ridge in which the chin terminated, extending
over a space of nine inches in height and two and a half inches in
breadth. The existence of these rudimentary hairs must have some
significance beyond any possible utility they may be to the animal.
Perhaps some better explanation may ultimately be found for them, but it
must be admitted that they are extremely suggestive that we have here a
case of heredity or conformation to a type of ancestor with a full hairy
clothing, just on the point of yielding to complete adaptation to the
conditions in which whales now dwell.
In the organs of the senses the Cetacea exhibit some remarkable adaptive
modifications of structures essentially formed on the Mammalian type,
and not on that characteristic of the truly aquatic Vertebrates, the
fishes, which, if function were the only factor in the production of
structure, they might be supposed to resemble.
The modifications of the organs of sight do not so much affect the
eyeball as the accessory apparatus. To an animal whose surface is always
bathed with fluid, the complex arrangement which mammals generally
possess for keeping the surface of the transparent cornea moist and
protected, the movable lids, the nictitating membrane, the lachrymal
gland, and the arrangements for collecting and removing the superfluous
tears when they have served their function, cannot be needed, and hence
we find these parts in a most rudimentary condition or altogether
absent. In the same way the organ of hearing in its essential structure
is entirely mammalian, having not only the sacculi and semicircular
canals common to all but the lowest vertebrates, but the cochlea, and
tympanic cavity with its ossicles and membrane, all, however, buried
deep in the solid substance of the head; while the parts specially
belonging to terrestrial mammals,--those which collect the vibrations of
the sound travelling through air, the pinna and the tube which conveys
it to the sentient structures within,--are entirely or practically
wanting. Of the pinna or external ear there is no trace. The meatus
auditorius is certainly there, reduced to a minute aperture in the skin
like a hole made by the prick of a pin, and leading to a tube so fine
and long that it cannot be a passage for either air or water, and
therefore can have no appreciable function in connection with the organ
of hearing, and must be classed with the other numerous rudimentary
structures that whales exhibit.