Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, July 1899: Volume LV, No. 3, July 1899Various
Religion
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, July 1899: Volume LV, No. 3, July 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
The two whales at Coney Island were good-sized ones, nearly ten feet
long, and they raced around, side by side, and played for nearly two
hours before they began to take the eels which had been in the tank
several days, although the large mammals had been without food for at
least seven days. On the way down I had noticed a difference in the
sound of their breathing, that of the female being sharp and clear,
while her mate seemed to have a hoarseness, and occasionally gave
something like a cough. I called attention to this and told Mr. Coup
that the animal had some lung trouble. He consulted a man who
professed to know about these animals, and then reported his opinion
that the cough was nothing to fear, "merely a little water in the
blow-hole."
"This may be true," I replied; "I'm not a medical man, but I've heard
many consumptives cough, and that whale imitates them. I doubt if it
lives a month."
It lived just twenty-six days after its arrival at Coney Island. The
last five days of its life it took no food, and its labored breathing
was annoying to all who knew the cause of it. Then came a touching
display of affection. The female slackened her pace day by day to
accommodate it to that of her constantly weakening companion, and as
the end neared she put her broad transverse tail under his and
propelled him along. He stopped breathing at 10 A. M., but his mate
kept up her efforts, occasionally making a swift run around the tank,
as if to say, "Come, follow me," and then slowing up at his side,
resumed the work of sculling him along, as before. Rude men expressed
pity for the living one, and after my men had rigged a derrick and
hoisted her mate from the pool she would rise higher out of water when
she came up to blow, remembering that he had gone out over the top of
the tank. An autopsy by local physicians, whose names have been
forgotten, assisted by a medical student then in my employ, now Dr. J.
R. Latham, 126 West Eleventh Street, New York city, disclosed the fact
that the whale died of pneumonia.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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