Natural History of Cetacea: Whales and Dolphins

This book deals with a natural history of Whales and Dolphins, aquatic mammals within the order of Cetacea.

The Whales form one of the most extraordinary groups of the Mammalia, for they are warm-blooded, air-breathers, and sucklers of their young, and are most strangely adapted for life in a watery element. Oddly enough the term “Fish” is still applied to them by the whalers, though they have nothing in common with these creatures save a certain similitude in shape. The vulgar notion of a Whale is an enormous creature with an extremely capacious mouth, but the fact is that many of the Cetacea are of relatively moderate dimensions, though doubtless, on the other hand, the magnitude of some is perfectly amazing. Thus, in size they are variable as a group, a range of from five or six feet (equal to the stature of man) to seventy or eighty feet giving sufficiently wide limits. With certain exceptions, notwithstanding length, an average-sized Whale by no means conveys to the eye the same idea of vastness, say for instance, as does an Elephant. The reason is that most Cetaceans are of a club shape, the compact cylindrical body and long narrow tapering tail reducing the idea of size...