The seals and whales of the British seas / by Thomas Southwell.

  • Southwell, Thomas, 1831-1909.
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The seals and whales of the British seas / by Thomas Southwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the object of its pursuit, was found in front of it. It measured 12 ft. 6 in. in length. The tail was 34 inches across, and the flippers 17 inches long. It was a female [adult] and had twenty teeth in the upper jaw, and sixteen in the lower. The stomach contained a few flakes of fish, which, from their size and colour, might have been salmon I have heard since, that two days before its capture, it was seen off Cracaig by Brora fishermen, who were lying at their lines. At first they thought it was a human body; as it approached, against the ebb, they took it for a ghost! ” On examining the skull of this specimen, Professor Flower discovered that, at some previous period of the animal’s existence, the atlas had been completely dislocated, “ the whole of the surfaces, formerly in apposition, being now free from each other,” an injury to an aquatic animal as difficult to account for as it is to imagine the possibility of its surviving, but affording a remarkable instance of the creature’s recuperative power. The Whales exhibited at the Westminster Aquarium, in September, 1877, and again in May, 1878, belonged to this species ; unfortunately they did not live to equal in docility and intelligence a specimen exhibited in America, which “ learned to recognize his keeper, and would allow himself to be handled by him, and at the proper time would come and put his head out of the water to receive the harness ” by which he was attached to a car in which he drew a young lady round the tank,—or to take his food. A specimen of Delphinus tursio, which was for a time with him in the same tank, is said to have been even more docile than this remarkable animal.* The adult Beluga is pure white, and a “ school ” of these animals “ leaping and playing in the calm, dark sea,” is said to be a very beautiful sight. In summer the Green- landers kill great numbers, extracting the oil and drying the flesh for winter use ; in Russia, the prepared skin is much used for reins or other parts of * Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., 3rd series, vol. 17, p, 312.