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imbedded in the gum of the upper jaw there are a series of small rudimentary
teeth. The throat has two grooves, and the tail is large and deeply indented on
its posterior edge.
From the thick blubber which lies along the back, flanks, and under parts
comes the valuable sperm oil. Another product of the Sperm Whale is ambergris,
a gummy substance containing the beaks of cuttlefish and found in the intestines
of the Whale or floating on the sea after expulsion. It acquires a pleasant odour,
and is used in the making of perfumes, being worth from 155. to 25s. per oz.
Beddard states1 that ‘ a piece of ambergris has been found worth no less than
500/. ; it weighed 130 lb. A larger piece even than that has been stated to have
been in the possession of the Dutch East India Company; it weighed 982 lb.’ 2
The value of a large male Sperm Whale is about 300/.
Distribution.—With the partial abandonment of the American Sperm Whale
fishery this Whale is now abundant in nearly all the temperate seas of the world.
Of its southern limits we know very little except that it is not found among the
Antarctic ice, although it is very common in the cold seas to the south of New
Zealand. In all the warm waters of the Central Pacific,8 the Indian Ocean,
especially about Java and Sumatra, the west coast of Africa, and as far northwest
as the Azores (where a few are killed annually by the Portuguese), and
Bermuda,4 the Sperm Whale is found in herds. There is only one record of its
occurrence inthe Mediterranean.6
Mr. Frank Bullen gives6 a list of the favourite resorts of the species:
‘ New Guinea and parts adjacent ; off any part of the Kingsmill Group ; on
the Equator between the meridian of 1680 to 1750 East ; off" Ellis’s group of
islands ; off Rotumah ; off the eastern coast of Australia from 250 to 340
South, and along the north-west coast ; all round New Zealand ; practically the
whole of Polynesian waters; from Fanning’s to Christmas Island, North Pacific;
off the whole west coast of North and South America, from 50° South to 50°
North, and for a thousand miles to the eastward ; practically the whole of the
Indian Ocean and thé waters of the East Indian Archipelago; the coast of Japan
and the vicinity of the Bonin Isles ; China Sea ; Red Sea ; Persian Gulf.’
1 A Book o f Whales, p. 198. * See Van Beneden and Gervais, Ostéographie des Cétacés, p. 304.
3 Scammon states that Sperm Whales have been captured in the Pacific as far south as 56° latitude, and as far north as
Cape Ommany, in latitude 56°i2'. He rightly suggests, however, that it is found as far north as there is open water.
4 Their presence in the seas near Bermuda was noted so long ago as the year 1668 by Richard Norwood. Philos.
Trans, vol. i. no. 30, pp. 565-567.
3 Gervais, Comptes Rendus, Paris Acad. p. 876 (1864). 6 Strand Magazine, November 1903.
To the North Atlantic it is an annual summer visitor in small ‘ schools,’
striking in to the west of the island of Harris at about the same time as the
Balcenoptera. A few stragglers reach so far as the coast of Denmark and Norway,
and one bull, sixty feet in length and fifty feet in circumference, was killed
by Captain Anton Anderson, in the steamer ‘ Fridjof,’ near the Bredebugt in
Iceland in June 1896. The capture of this individual was remarkable not only as
instancing the northern limit of the species, but as showing the extraordinary
length of its actual migration, for its stomach contained a small blue shark and
several lines and shell-hooks, which are only used by Bornean and Sumatran
fishermen of the Malay Archipelago. Since this date the operations of the
Icelandic Fin-whalers have proved that the Sperm Whale is an almost regular
visitor to the east coast of Iceland. In 1903 six were killed there, and others
were captured in 1904 and 1905.
To the cold seas of the North-western Atlantic the Sperm Whale is also a
regular summer visitor in small ‘ pods,’ and every year a few are seen and killed
by the Newfoundland Fin-whalers.1 I can find no record of the occurrence of this
species in West Greenland, but have little doubt that it occasionally visits these
northern latitudes.
Prior to the arrival of the Norwegians in Shetland and Harris the records of
the stranding of this Whale on the British coasts were few. Fossil teeth of the
Sperm Whale have been found in the Norfolk Forest Bed (Sidestrand), and in the
Pleistocene deposits of Essex.
The earliest English record— for we have no actual date for the stranding of
the Sperm Whale whose skull is now the ‘ Devil’s Seat’ at Great Yarmouth,
though it was certainly in the sixteenth century— is of an individual, said to be
about fifty-seven feet in length, which was stranded on the Norfolk coast at
Hunstanton in 1626. Mr. Southwell gives a long and interesting account,2 from
information extracted from the diary of Sir Hamon and Sir Nicholas le Strange,
of this animal. Twenty years later, in 1646, a number of Sperm Whales, including
two young ones, got into difficulties in the Wash; one came ashore at Wells and
another at Holme. About the year 1652 a Sperm Whale was stranded at
Yarmouth, and in 1689 another reached the Norfolk coast; the following year a
1 The following particulars of Sperm Whales killed in Newfoundland in 1905 are given to me by Captain Larsen:
‘ I encountered a herd of twenty Sperm Whales between Bonavista Bay and Stinking Island on July 11, 1905, and killed the
two largest bulls, 60 and 64 feet in length. These gave 180 big barrels of oil (5 barrels to the ton). Captain Hansen killed
one near Harbour Grace in September and Captain Davidson in the Lynx took three in the month of July.’
s Ancient Records o f the Occurrence o f Certain Cetaceans on the Norfolk Coast, October 1901.