The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-02-04

A whales. It had whale oil that was then worth $50,000. and the whalebone
 at the preesnt prices would have been
 worth more than a million dollars.
 The right whale Is one of the giants
 of the seas. It is from 40 to 50 feet long and it sometimes weighs 90 tons. It is
 not the largest of the whales. The com-
 mon hunchback is fully as long, and the sperm whale often reaches 60 feet, while
 the rorqual sometimes runs up to 80 feet. The blue rorqual is the largest of known animals
 The head of the right whale is Of
 enormous size. It forms about one-third of the whole body. The cavity of the
 mouth is so large that if the animal
 could bend itself up, like the India rub Der man in the circus, it could almost swallow the rest of the body. It Is from the mouth that the whalebone comes.
 This is in the shape of great blades which run along the sides of the jaws
 and give the floor of the mouth the shape of 8 great spoon. There are 760 of these blades, and some of them are 10 or 12 feet in length. They are black in color and attached to them are the soft, silky, tough hairs which the animal uses to catch the feed. consisting of small water animals, which 1t scoops into it's mouth
 The whalebone acts as a strainer or sieve, letting out the water and holding the food. The other varieties of whales have whalebone, but none compares with that from the right whale, which is now so valuable that 1t sometimes sells for
 $10000 a ton.
 The right whale, like all the others of the whale family, is not a fish. It is
 mammal, and it might be called the great COW of the sea. It has teats and it suclxles it's young like COW. It Is said to have an enormous amount Of milk, and some years ago articles were published advocating the use of whale milk for human food The skin of the 1 whale Is smooth, but its hide is some times incrusted with barnacles and other shell-like parasites. The animal is kept
 warm by the heavy layer of fat or blub- Der that lies under the skin of the whole 1 body. This enables 1t to live in the cold ] est water, and the arctic right whale 1 has its home about Greenland and Hud- son bay and in the Arctic ocean north of | Alaska and Canada Many are found in Davis strait, and also about Spitzenber- 1 gen and Greenland. There are vessels l that start out from San Francisco in the spring and go through Bering strait | into the Arctic ocean. They begin fish 1 ing for the right whale in May and con
 tinue their fishing in the autumn. The ' whales disappear in the summer, and between seasons some of the vessels go south for sperm whaling.
 l In the past these animals were nu- merous about Greenland and in Hud-
 son bay. They were hunted by whalers i from New England and Scotland, and | also by the Dutch and Norwegians.
 Later the whalers began to go to Boring
 sea to find the right whale. They made l their way through Boring strait, and 1 about the close of our Mexican war 25O ships started out from New England and brought back vast amount of whalebone and oil. In one year there were 50 ships from New Bedford and Boston, each of
 which captured 10 or 15 whales The business continued to be profitable and
 whalers from everywhere went there.
 The Russians started whaling. and their first ship brought back 10 tons of whale bone and 1500 barrels of oil. It paid the original cost of the vessel that one trip,
 and gave, in addition. profit of 60 per cent
 Whaling in the Arctic ocean is ex-