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
A white whale which reached the Broadway aquarium about July 1st,
after mine came, lived seven months, dying January 28, 1878. My whale
was either diseased when captured or took a cold at Isle aux Coudres.
The New York one was sound all summer, and I told Mr. Coup that it
might live for years, but the artificial heat of the aquarium in
winter was not what a subarctic animal could endure, and it succumbed
as most of Peary's Eskimos did in New York last winter. The autopsy on
this whale was performed by Dr. F. D. Weisse, professor of practical
and surgical anatomy of the medical department of the University of
the City of New York, assisted by Prof. J. W. I. Arnold, of the same
university, and Dr. Liautard, superintendent of the Veterinary
College. They agreed that pneumonia was the cause of death, induced by
a change of temperature of the water in which the animal had been
kept. The official measurements of this female specimen, whose organs
were kept in the two institutions named, were: nine feet six inches
from snout to tail tips; three feet between tips of caudal fins, with
a body breadth of twenty inches and a head breadth of thirteen inches.
The lungs, weighing twenty-two pounds, presented on dissection the
appearance of having been affected with chronic catarrhal pneumonia.
The liver weighed nineteen pounds. The four stomachs were all free
from any trace of previous disease.
In looking up the life history of the white whale when opportunity
offered, during the last twenty years I have consulted many old
whalemen, and they all say that whales of all kinds take their babies
on their flukes and scull them along as my female sculled her dying
and dead partner. This must be a fact, for the little one could never
swim with its parent. But another question arises: Is this purely a
female instinct to provide for its young, which was, in the case of my
pair, developed into a desire to preserve a companion? or, in other
words, would a male have done this, or would a female have done it if
she were free and had other companions? Was it love for her mate, or a
feeling of selfishness at her lonely position? My female was afterward
sent to England in the old transportation box, and was nine days
without food, for they will not swallow food in transit, and it lived
four days in London, clearing more than enough to pay for the animal
and all expenses.
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