XXXIII.—The Right Whale of the North Atlantic, Balæna biscayensis: its Skeleton described and compared with that of the Greenland Right Whale, Balæna mysticetus.

Wm. Turner

doi:10.1017/S0080456800013041

XXXIII.—The Right Whale of the North Atlantic, Balæna biscayensis: its Skeleton described and compared with that of the Greenland Right Whale, Balæna mysticetus.

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2012

Wm. Turner

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Wm. Turner: Affiliation:
President of the Society, Knight of the Royal Prussian Order Pour le Mérite.

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From the thirteenth to the seventeenth century a successful whale fishery was prosecuted in the Bay of Biscay and in the North Atlantic by seamen from the Basque ports of France and the north of Spain. So daring was their enterprise that they pursued their avocation northward to Iceland and even westward to Newfoundland and the adjoining shores of the American continent. The reputation of the Basque sailors as skilful whaling fishermen was so widely recognised that, when the whaling companies in England and Holland were started in the early years of the seventeenth century, Biscayan seamen were employed as the harpooners to strike the whales, and as coopers to construct the casks to contain the blubber. Up to that time the knowledge of the specific differences amongst the large whalebone whales was most imperfect, and it is not unlikely that both Right Whales and Fin Whales were captured as opportunity offered, though the former, from the greater length of whalebone and the thickness of blubber, were more prized. In 1611 an English whaling company sent for the first time an expedition to Spitzbergen, and from the instructions given to its commander, Thomas Edge, it would seem that two kinds of Right Whales had even then been noticed, the one larger and more valuable from the oil which it yielded and the length of the baleen, now known as the Greenland Right Whale, Balæna mysticetus, and the other a smaller whale, called the “Sarda.” A whale captured off the coast of Iceland by the French and Spanish seamen, locally named “Sletbag,” was probably the same as the Right Whale the “Sarda.” With the development of the whale fishery in the Arctic Ocean, it became more evident that the Greenland Right Whale was distinct from the smaller animal which had previously been the object of pursuit. In 1671 F. Martens gave the name “Nordcaper” to Baleen Whales captured near the North Cape ; they differed from those which frequented the Spitzbergen seas in being smaller, with less blubber, shorter whalebone, more active and more dangerous to kill. The name Nordcaper continued to be employed as equivalent to the Baleine de Sarde of the French naturalists, and Bonnaterre and Lacépède, adopting nordcaper as a specific name, distinguished it from Balæna mysticetus, La Baleine tranche, or the Greenland Right Whale.

Type: Research Article
Information: Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , 1913 , pp. 889 - 922

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0080456800013041 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1913

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^{page 890 note *} Journal d'un Voyage au Spitzberguen, Amsterdam, 1732.

^{page 890 note †} Lacépède, , Histoire nat. des Cétacées, Paris, l'an xii. de la République (1804).Google ScholarB. nordcaper, La machoire inférieure très-arrondie; très-haute et très-large; le corps alongé; la queue alongée.

^{page 890 note ‡} Recherches sur les Ossemens fossiles, v., Paris, 1825.

^{page 890 note §} Hist. nat. des Cétacés, Paris, 1836.

^{page 890 note ║} Observations anatomiques sur la structure intérieure de plusieurs espèces de Cétacés, with Atlas of 53 plates, Paris, 1820.

^{page 890 note ¶} Kong. Danske Vidensk., v., 1861. Translated in Ray Soc. Publications, London, 1866.

^{page 890 note **} “Hist. nat. de la Balœna biscayensis,” Mém. couron. Acad. Roy. Belgique, 1886.

^{page 890 note ††} Comptes rendus, p. 294, 1860; Ann. des Sc. nat., 5th series, t. i., 1864.

^{page 890 note ‡‡} Ann. del Museo Civico di Storici nat. di Genova, voi. xiv., 1879.

^{page 891 note *} Ostéographie des Cétacés, by VAN BENEDEN and GERVAIS, plate vii.

^{page 891 note †} Ann. des Sciences nat., vol. xv., 1871; Actes de la Soc. Linnéenne de Bordeaux, vol. xxxv., 1881.

^{page 891 note ‡} Mem. dell' Accad. delle Scien. di Bologna, vol. vii., 1877.

^{page 891 note §} Atti della R. Accad. delle Scien., Napoli, vol. vii. 1878.

^{page 891 note ║} Mem. de la R. Acad. des Ciencias, Madrid, vol. xiii., 1889.

^{page 891 note ¶} In the course of his inquiry, Signor Graells made the interesting observation that the shields of the municipalities of the coast towns, Bermeo, Lequeitio, Castrourdiale, Ondarroa and Plencia in Viscayo, showed their early association with the whale fishery, as Basque fishermen giving chase to whales with boats and harpoons are represented.

^{page 891 note **} Comptes rendus de la Soc. de Biologie, Paris, 1891.

^{page 891 note ††} “Zur Kenntniss des Nordkapers,” Zool. Jahrbuch, vii.; also in Biol. Centralblatt, Leipzig, xxiii., 1903.

^{page 891 note ‡‡} Proc. Nat. Hist. Soc., Glasgow, 1881; also in his work on Seals and Whales, 1881, and in Ann. Scot. Nat. Hist., January 1907.

^{page 892 note *} Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., vol. xvi., 1905.

^{page 892 note †} “Whaling in Scotland,” Ann. Scot. Nat. Hist., January 1907.

^{page 892 note ‡} Proc. Zool. Soc., London, October 1910.

^{page 892 note §} Report, British Assoc. Ad. Sc., Dundee, 1912.

^{page 892 note ║} Proc. Zool. Soc., London, vol. i., 1909.

^{page 892 note ¶} Proc. Boy. Soc., London, 1909.

^{page 892 note **} Freund, F. described, Deutsche Arbeit, xi. p. 417, 1911–1912Google Scholar, the use of the harpoon gun in the whale fishery off the Faroe Islands. B. biscayensis was seldom seen.

^{page 893 note *} “The Whalebone Whale of the Western North Atlantic,” Smithsonian Contributions, Washington, 1904.

^{page 893 note †} Historia piscium naturalis, 1740.

^{page 893 note ‡} Tableau encyclopédique et méthodique: Cétologie, pp. 3 and 4, Paris, 1789.

^{page 893 note §} Proc. Zool. Soc., London, 1909.

^{page 893 note ║} Bonnaterre evidently relied on the descriptions by Anderson and Horrebows in their histories of Iceland for an account of the mode of fishing of this whale, though the latter disputed the accuracy of Anderson's statements. Bonnaterre's specific characters are as follows: “Le Nord Caper. B. glacialis, B. maxillis subæqualibus; inferiore rotundâ, in medio latiore; dorso impinni, albicante.”

^{page 894 note *} Dict. Class. d'Hist. Nat., ii., 1822.

^{page 894 note †} Actes de la Soc. Linnéenne de Bordeaux, xxvii., Nov. 1868.

^{page 894 note ‡} Proc. Acad. Nat. Sc., Philadelphia, 1865.

^{page 894 note §} Bull. American Museum, New York, vol. i. No. 4, 1883.

^{page 895 note *} Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xxvi., 1872.

^{page 895 note †} Zoology, part iv., 1880.

^{page 895 note ‡} See plate ii. figs. 9, 10, in my Challenger Beport on the Bones of Cetacea, part iv., 1880.

^{page 895 note §} Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xxiv., 1903.

^{page 895 note ║} The Killer Whale, Orca gladiator, is a flesh-eating cetacean, for it attacks and devours seals and porpoises.

^{page 895 note ¶} Summary of Results, 2nd part, 1895.

^{page 896 note *} Ostéographie des Cétacés, by van Beneden and Gervais, fig. 1, pl. vii.

^{page 897 note *} Lütken, has given in Vidensk. Selsk Skr., Copenhagen, 1873Google Scholar, an elaborate account of the species of Cyamus which infest whales.

^{page 898 note *} Marine Mammals in the Anatomical Museum of the University of Edinburgh, pp. 21, 22, 1912.

^{page 900 note *} For an account of the structure and vascularity of whalebone, see my memoir on Balænoptera sibbaldi in Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xxvi., 1870.

^{page 902 note *} These crania are catalogued in my Marine Mammals in the Anat. Mus. of the University, pp. 21, 22, London, 1912. As the skeleton of the smaller mysticete was suspended in the Museum at a considerable height, difficulty occurred in making complete measurements.

^{page 903 note *} I may refer to my recently published volume, Marine Mammals in the Anatomical Museum of the University of Edinburgh, London, 1912, for observations on and figures of the tympanic bones in many species of the Cetacea.

^{page 905 note *} See my memoir on Balænoptera sibbaldi (op. cit.), 1870.

^{page 907 note *} One dorsal had probably not been preserved.

^{page 908 note *} I have described the cervicals of B. australis from New Zealand in my Challenger Report on the Bones of the Cetacea, Reports, Zoology, part iv., 1880.

^{page 909 note *} I found this to be the case in an advanced fœtus of a Balœnoptera sibbaldi dissected in 1869–1870. The fœtus is described in Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., 1870.

^{page 911 note *} I figured many years ago the sternum of a fœtal Balænoptera sibbaldi which had a small supplementary second segment (Journ. Anat. and Phys., vol. iv., 1870, and Marine Mammals, op. cit., 1912).

^{page 911 note †} Journ. Anat. and Phys., vol. xxix., 1895. Fig. 19B is from one of his specimens.

^{page 916 note *} I may refer to my memoirs in Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xxix. p. 687 and vol. xxx. p. 508, also to my book on Marine Mammals (op. cit.), for figures and descriptions of the manus in the Odontoceti.

^{page 917 note *} Journ. Anat. and Phys., vol. xxix., 1895.

^{page 917 note †} This specimen has been presented to the University Anatomical Museum.

^{page 918 note *} Journ. Anat. and Phys., vol. xv., 1881.

^{page 920 note *} If this figure is compared with that of the orbit of a young Balæna japonica in Reinhardt's memoir on Eschricht's collection, Vidensk. Selsk. Skr., 5 Række, Copenhagen, 1869, their close resemblance may be noted.

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XXXIII.—The Right Whale of the North Atlantic, Balæna biscayensis: its Skeleton described and compared with that of the Greenland Right Whale, Balæna mysticetus.

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