In the table on the next page I have endeavoured to give the_The seals and whales of the British seas

striking external peculiarities of our British _Mystacoceti_. They are

easily remembered, and will be useful in identifying specimens, should

no authority be at hand. The table also indicates the external points

to be observed by a person not acquainted with this class of animals,

and is most serviceable to enable others to identify doubtful specimens.

TABLE OF DIFFERENCES OF BRITISH MYSTACOCETI (WHALEBONE WHALES).

+------------------------+---------------+---------+-----------------+

| SPECIES. + ------+-------+Belly and| Flippers. |

+------------------------+-------+-------+---------+-----------------+

| | | | | |

| | | | | |

| | | | | |

| | | | | |

| | | | | |

| | | | | |

+------------------------+-------+-------+---------+-----------------+

+---------------------------------------------------------------------+

| SPECIES. | Dorsal |----------+------------+ Total |

| | | | | |

+------------------------+--------+ ---------+------------+-----------+

| | | 10 or 12| | |

| | | | | |

| | | | | |

| | | | | |

| | | | | |

| | | | | |

| | | | | |

| | | | | |

+------------------------+--------+----------+------------+-----------+

[Illustration: Fig. 16. Sperm Whale (_Physeter macrocephalus_, Linn.)]

ODONTOCETI (TOOTHED WHALES).

_PHYSETERIDÆ._

The second sub-order into which the Cetacea are divided, is the

_Odontoceti_, or Toothed Whales. In this section, baleen is never

present, but well-developed teeth are found in one or both jaws of

the adult; in some species they are very numerous; sometimes, though

rarely, deciduous. The blow-hole is single, and the skull generally

asymmetrical, or not precisely alike on both sides of the medial line.

Professor Flower divides the _Odontoceti_ into three families, one of

which, the _Platanistidæ_, as already said, is found only in India

and South America: the other two, _Physeteridæ_ and _Delphinidæ_, are

represented in our Fauna by about fifteen species.

Of the _Physeteridæ_, four genera are represented in the British fauna

by four or five species; namely, one _Physeter_, the Sperm Whale; two

_Hyperoodon_, the common Beaked Whale, and a doubtful species called

the Broad-fronted Beaked Whale; one _Ziphius_, Cuvier’s Whale; and one

_Mesoplodon_, Sowerby’s Whale.

SPERM WHALE, OR CACHELOT.

By far the most conspicuous species of this interesting group is the

SPERM WHALE, _Physeter macrocephalus_ (Linnæus), which rivals the

Right-Whale in commercial importance, and in the value of its products.

This species has a very wide geographical range, having been found

in almost every sea between lat. 60° north and 60° south. The attempt

has been made, I think unsuccessfully, to show that the Sperm Whale of

the Southern Hemisphere is distinct from that of the northern; there

seems, however, no reason, at present, to doubt, although, of course,

it may eventually be found otherwise, that the same species of Sperm

Whale ranges over the whole of this vast tract of ocean. North of

about 40° it appears to be only a straggler, and although the Arctic

seas are almost always stated by authors to be its head-quarters, very

few well-authenticated instances of its occurrence farther north than

Scotland are on record; Lilljeborg excludes it from his account of the

Scandinavian Cetacea, but Herr Collett says that within the last 100

years, at least two individuals of this species have been stranded

on the Norwegian coast, and that Professor Sars, during a stay in

Loffoden, received information which convinced him that one was seen

there in the summer of 1865.

From the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth

century, the stranding of individuals of this species on the coast

of Great Britain, and, indeed, of other countries in Europe from the

Netherlands to the Mediterranean, was by no means a rare occurrence;

these were generally solitary males, but occasionally small “schools”

were met with, as in July, 1577, in the Scheldt, where three were

taken; also, at Hunstanton, in Norfolk, in 1646, mentioned below.

Of its occurrence on the British coast there are numerous instances;

in all cases, however, they are believed by Andrew Murray to have been

stragglers, “which have rounded Cape Horn (they have never been known

to double the Cape of Good Hope) or unpromising colonies, for they are

becoming scarcer and scarcer in more than their due proportion.”[29]

Eight or ten individuals of this species have occurred on the coast of

Scotland between the years 1689 and 1871 (Alston, ‘Fauna of Scot.’, p.

18).

[Illustration: Fig. 17. Chair in Great Yarmouth Church, formed from the

basal portion of the skull of the Sperm Whale.]

[Illustration: Fig. 18. Back view of the same.]

In the church of St. Nicholas, at Great Yarmouth, is the basal portion

of a skull of this animal, which has been converted into a chair: it

formerly stood outside the church, and of course, as it was an object

of wonder, it was relegated to the powers of darkness, and _christened_

(?) the “Devil’s Seat;” it has, however, now been admitted into mother

church, and stands beside the north-west door under the clock. In the

churchwardens’ accounts for 1606 there is a charge of 8s. for painting

this chair, which clearly proves its antiquity. In a letter to Sir

Thomas Browne (Wilkins’ edit., 1852, editor’s preface to “Pseudodoxia,”

vol. i. p. lxxxi.), Sir Hamon L’Estrange writes that in June, 1626, a

Whale, afterwards referred to by Sir T. Browne as a Sperm Whale (vol.

iii. p. 324), was cast upon his shore or sea-liberty, “some-tyme parcel

of the possessions of the Abbey of Ramsey, &c.” The same author, in his

account of the “Fishes found in Norfolk and on the Coast,” says, “A

Spermaceti Whale of 62 feet long [came on shore] near Wells, another

of the same kind twenty years before at Hunstanton [the one referred

to by Sir H. L’Estrange]; and not far off, eight or nine came ashore,

and two had young ones after they were forsaken by the water.” The

Whale mentioned by Sir H. L’Estrange came on shore in 1626; twenty

years after would give 1646 as the date of the Wells specimen; and

in December of that year, according to Booth’s “History of Norfolk,”

published in 1781 (vol. ix. p. 33), “A great Whale was cast on the

shore here [at Holme-next-the-Sea], the wind blowing strongly at the

north-west, 57 feet long, the breadth of the nose-end eight feet, from

nose-end to the eye 15½ feet; the eyes about the same bigness as those

of an ox, the lower chap closed and shut about four feet short of the

upper; this lower chap narrow towards the end, and therein were 46

teeth like the tusks of an elephant; the upper one had no teeth, but

sockets of bones to receive the teeth: two small fins only, one on

each side, and a short small fin on the back; it was a male ...; the

breadth of the tail, from one outward tip to the other, was 13½ feet.

The profit made of it was £217 6s. 7d., and the charge in cutting it

up and managing it came to £100 or more.” It seems probable that a

“school” got bewildered in the shallow waters of the Wash, and that the

individual of which Booth gives such an excellent description, formed

one of the same party as the eight or nine mentioned by Sir T. Browne.

In May, 1652, Mr. Arthur Bacon writes to Sir T. Browne about the Sperm

Whale cast on shore at Yarmouth, but the actual date of the occurrence

is not given. Since these ancient records, many others have occurred

at intervals, singly or in small parties, on various parts of the

coast; the last instance, I believe, being in July, 1871, when one was

stranded on the shore of the Isle of Skye.

[Illustration: Fig. 19. SKELETON OF THE SPERM WHALE (after Flower).

s, Spermaceti Cavity; n, Nasal Passage, in dotted line; b, Blow-hole.]

Of the osteology of the Sperm Whale, Professor Flower has given an

exhaustive description in a paper published in the ‘Transactions’

of the Zoological Society, vol. vi., and of its habits a very

interesting account is given by Thomas Beale, who, in the capacity of

surgeon on board ships employed in the South Sea fishery, had unusual

opportunities of observing this remarkable animal. He published a

book entitled ‘The Natural History of the Sperm Whale,’ to which I am

largely indebted for what I shall have to say about this species.

The colour of the Sperm Whale is black above and grey beneath, the

colours gradually shading into each other. The full-grown male is about

sixty feet long; the females are much smaller and more slender than the

males. The head, which constitutes more than one-third of the whole

of the animal, presents a very remarkable appearance, the truncated

form of the snout looking as though it were cut off at right angles

to the body: at the upper angle is situated the single blow-hole. The

juncture of the head with the body is the thickest portion, and the

body decreases little in size till the “hump,” which is situated in

the place of the dorsal fin, is reached; from this point it rapidly

diminishes to the tail. The flukes of the tail are from twelve to

fourteen feet in breadth, and the two flippers each about six feet

long. The under jaw is pointed, and about two feet shorter than the

upper; it is furnished with about twenty-five large conical teeth on

each side; but the number is not constant, nor is it always the same

on each side. In the upper jaw are no visible teeth, but those of the

lower jaw shut into corresponding depressions in the upper. The tongue

is small, and, like the lining of the mouth, of a white colour. The

upper part of the head, called the “case,” contains the “spermaceti,”

which upon the death of the animal granulates into a yellowish

substance. Beale says that a large Whale not unfrequently contains a

ton of spermaceti. Beneath the “case” is situated the “junk,” which

consists of a dense cellular mass, containing oil and spermaceti. The

blubber is about fourteen inches thick on the breast, and in most

other parts of the body from eight to eleven inches. By the whalers

this covering is called the “blanket.” With regard to the apparently

ungainly head of the Sperm Whale, Beale remarks as follows:--“One of

the peculiarities of the Sperm Whale, which strikes at first sight

every beholder, is the apparently disproportionate and unwieldy bulk of

the head; but this peculiarity, instead of being, as might be supposed,

an impediment to the freedom of the animal’s motion in its native

element, is, in fact, on the contrary, in some respects, very conducive

to its lightness and agility, if such a term can with propriety be

applied to such an enormous creature; for a great part of the bulk of

the head is made up of a thin membranous case, containing, during life,

a thin oil, of much less specific gravity than water, below which is

again the junk, which, although heavier than the spermaceti, is still

lighter than the element in which the Whale moves; consequently, the

head, taken as a whole, is lighter specifically than any other part of

the body, and will always have a tendency to rise at least so far above

the surface as to elevate the nostril or “blow-hole” sufficiently for

all purposes of respiration; and more than this, a very slight effort

on the part of the fish would only be necessary to raise the whole of

the anterior flat surface of the nose out of the water. In case the

animal should wish to increase his speed to the utmost, the narrow

inferior surface, which has been before stated to bear some resemblance

to the cutwater of a ship, and which would, in fact, answer the same

purpose to the Whale, would be the only part exposed to the pressure

of the water in front, enabling him thus to pass with the greatest

celerity and ease through the boundless track of his wide domain.[30]

When swimming at ease, the Sperm Whale keeps just below the surface

of the water, and goes at about three or four miles an hour; but on

an emergency it is able to attain a speed of ten or twelve miles an

hour: it then progresses by means of powerful lateral strokes of its

tail, and alternately rises and sinks at each stroke. In progressing

in this manner, the blunt anterior surface of the head never presents

itself directly to the water; the animal’s body being in an oblique

position, it is only the angle formed by the inferior surface which

first presents itself, and this, which Beale likens to the “cutwater”

of a ship, offers the least possible amount of resistance.

[Illustration: Fig. 20. SKULL OF SPERM WHALE.]

When undisturbed, the Sperm Whale rises to the surface to breathe about

once every hour. Beale says the regularity with which every action

connected with its breathing is performed is remarkable; the time

occupied differs slightly in each individual, but each one is minutely

regular in the performance of every action connected with respiration,

so that the whalers know how long it will remain beneath the surface

before reappearing to renew its supply of air. A full-grown “bull,”

he says, remains at the surface ten or eleven minutes, during which

he makes sixty or seventy expirations; after which he disappears, to

return again to the surface in one hour and ten minutes. The blowing

is not accompanied by any sound, and notwithstanding the wonderful

accounts of its roarings and bellowings, the Sperm Whale may be said

to be an absolutely silent animal. The females and young males are

gregarious, but are found in separate herds or “schools,” as they

are called. A “school” will sometimes consist of five or six hundred

individuals. The herds of females are always accompanied by from one to

three large “bulls;” but the full-grown males are said to be generally

solitary in their habits, except on certain occasions, when it is

supposed they are migrating from one feeding-place to another. The

majority of those which occur on our coast are these solitary males;

when they visit us in herds, as mentioned by Sir Thomas Browne, they

are all probably females or young males. The “bulls” are very fierce

and jealous, and fight fiercely. The females show great attachment to

each other and to their young, so much so that, one being wounded, the

others of the herd remain and fall a comparatively easy prey. The young

males, on the other hand, are very wary and difficult of approach,

and should one be attacked, the others immediately take the alarm and

retreat. The female produces one young one, rarely two, at a time, and

breeds at all seasons of the year. Their senses of sight and hearing

are very acute, and after being once unsuccessfully attacked, they are

very difficult and dangerous to approach.

The food of the Sperm Whale consists almost entirely of Cephalopode

Mollusks (cuttlefish), although at times, when feeding near the shore,

it has been known to take fish as large as salmon. How it contrives to

capture such active prey as fish seems difficult to conceive. Beale is

of opinion that the Whale sinks to a proper depth in the sea, where

remaining as quiet as possible, and opening wide its mouth, the prey

are attracted by the glistening white colour of its lining membrane,

curiosity leading them to destruction; for no sooner have a sufficient

number entered his mouth than the Whale rapidly closes his under jaw,

and they are made prisoners, and swallowed.

The pursuit of the Sperm Whale is attended with much greater danger

than that of the Greenland Whale, and Beale gives many instances

in which, in his own experience, boats were stove in and men lost;

stories of fighting Whales, he says, are numerous, and probably much

exaggerated; one, known as “Timor Jack,” is said to have destroyed

every boat sent against him, till at last he was killed by approaching

him from several directions at the same time, his attention thus being

diverted from the boat which made the successful attack. Another fish,

known as “New Zealand Tom,” destroyed nine boats successively before

breakfast, and when eventually captured, after destroying many other

boats, many harpoons from the various ships which had attacked him were

found sticking in his body. There is one well-authenticated instance of

a vessel being attacked and destroyed by a Sperm Whale: the American

whale-ship _Essex_ was attacked by one, which, first passing under the

vessel, probably by accident, came in contact with her keel and carried

it away: then turning and rushing furiously upon the ship, the Whale

stove in her bow; so serious was the breach that the vessel speedily

filled and went down. Most of the crew were away in their boats at the

time, but those on board had just time to launch their one remaining

boat before the vessel sank. The boats made for the coast of Peru, the

nearest land, many hundreds of miles distant; one of them was picked up

drifting at sea, and three of the crew, who were found in it in a state

of insensibility, were the only survivors of the ill-fated vessel.

In addition to the sperm and oil, this species yields another product

which is, or was, very valuable, although it is the result of disease,

and one would imagine a very uninviting substance--I refer to

_Ambergris_, the origin and composition of which was so long a puzzle

to the learned. This substance is now well known to be a concretion of

the indigestible portions of the Cuttlefish, which form the food of

the Sperm Whale. The nucleus of the mass is generally the horny beaks

of these creatures, and the substance itself is found in the intestines

of the Sperm Whale, or on the shores of the seas frequented by this

species: no other Whale is known to be subject to these bezoars. It

was formerly believed that the origin of ambergris was in some way

connected with the sea, and when it was afterwards found in Whales,

the fact was simply attributed to their having swallowed it. Sir

Thomas Browne writes of the Sperm Whale which came on shore at Wells,

in 1646:--“In vain was it to rake for ambergriese in the paunch of

this leviathan, as Greenland discoverers and attests of experience

dictate that they sometimes swallow great lumps thereof in the sea;

insufferable fœtor denying that inquiry; and yet if, as Paracelsus

encourageth, ordure makes the best musk, and from the most fœtid

substances may be drawn the most odoriferous essences; all that had

not Vespasian’s nose (_Cui odor lucri ex re qualibet_) might boldly

swear here was a subject fit for such extractions” (vol. i., p. 356).

It was not until 1783, in a paper read before the Royal Society by Dr.

Swediaur, that a scientific account of the origin of ambergris was made

known. At the present time its medical virtues, which were formerly

considered very great, are altogether at a discount, and the only use

to which it is applied is in the preparation of perfumery.

The South Sea whale-fishery was long prosecuted by the Americans before

the British ships took part in it, from 1771 to 1775 Massachusetts is

said by McCulloch to have had 121 vessels in this trade; about the

beginning of the American war, however, the English also sent out

ships, and in 1791 had 75 vessels engaged in the South Seas. The number

of British ships, as with those employed in the northern fisheries,

varied considerably, influenced probably by the varying amounts of

bounty offered by the Government, but never exceeded 75; in 1815 they

had fallen off to 22; in 1820 they again rose to 68, from which they

gradually fell to 31 in 1829, all of which sailed from the port of

London. Beale sailed from London, in 1831, in the “Kent,” returning in

the “Sarah and Elizabeth,” both of which vessels belonged to Thomas

Sturge. The duration of the voyage was from two to four or even five

years, the average of 199 voyages being three years and three months,

and the yield of oil, 169 tons per voyage. At the present time no

British vessels are engaged in the South Sea trade, which has again

reverted to the Americans.

I have said very little about the method of pursuit and capture of

this species, and of the Right-Whale, because it is a subject in

which I take no pleasure; those who wish to know how these peaceful

and highly-organised giants are approached, and how they behave when

terrified and smarting under the harpoon and whale-lance, can pursue

the subject _ad nauseam_ in the pages of Scoresby, Beale, and others;

the sickening process of “flensing” and disposing of the blubber is

described with equal minuteness. The halo of romance with which some

authors seek to surround the whale-fishery, is, doubtless, in a great

measure due to the solitary and distant fields of operation, whether

it be in the frozen regions of the north, or the vast and trackless

oceans of the south, but its stern reality is prosaic enough. The

occupation is one of hardship and danger, but the remuneration when

successful is large in proportion, and I can hardly conceive, under any

circumstances, of men inflicting the fearful amount of suffering which

every “full” whale-ship, or in a still greater degree every “full”

sealer, represents. Science is constantly adding to our resources, and

it is sincerely to be hoped that ere long substitutes may be found

for animal oil and whalebone which will supersede their use in the

few processes in which they are still requisite: should this be long

delayed, it is to be feared that the Seals and Whales, at least of

the northern seas, will soon cease to exist. In the meantime, it is

gratifying to find that it is from the sealers and whalers themselves

that the demand for the better regulation of the trade has emanated,

and the name of Captain David Gray, of Peterhead, stands prominent

amongst those who have urged upon the governments of this and other

countries concerned, such regulations as shall insure greater humanity

in its prosecution, and prevent the wasteful destruction which,

if continued, must speedily ruin a valuable source of commercial

enterprise.

Although so widely spread over the waters of the globe, possessing, I

believe, a range greater than any other known mammal, it is only open

and deep waters which can be said to be the home of the Sperm Whale;

when found in shallow seas, its generally emaciated condition indicates

the absence of its proper nourishment; and the readiness with which

whole herds precipitate themselves stupidly upon the sands, shows how

little they are acquainted with such objects. Mr. Andrew Murray makes

some observations upon this subject, which are so interesting and so

suggestive that I cannot resist making a long quotation.

In the table on the next page I have endeavoured to give the most