The principal food of the sperm whale is "squid," a molluscous animal. "This is an animal of so curious an order as to merit a word of special notice. The principal peculiarity of this molluscous tribe is the possession of powerful tentacula or arms, ranged round the mouth, and provided with suckers, which give them the power of adhering to rocks or any other substances with surprising tenacity. Some of this tribe attain to a great size, and, as large as the whale is, will furnish it with no contemptible mouthful. In the gullet of one sperm whale, an arm or tentaculum of a sea-squid was found measuring nearly twenty-seven feet long." Whalemen frequently discover large masses or junks of squid floating about, probably torn in pieces by whales in their search after food. The flesh of the squid is soft, without bones, and somewhat transparent, like the common sunfish seen on our shores. It is said that squid have been seen as large as an ordinary whale. This food for the sperm whale is found in great abundance in the Pacific seas. 2. THE RIGHT WHALE. The whale having this general cognomen belongs to the species of _Balaena Mysticetus_. There are several varieties included in this species, as we shall hereafter observe, and which are distinguished by whalemen both in regard to some external peculiarity as well as the different localities where they are usually found. The right whale differs from the sperm in the following particulars: his head is sharper, more pointed; he has no "hump" on his back; the column of water which he throws up when he "blows" is divided like the tines of a fork; and it rises from his breathing holes in a perpendicular direction from eight to twenty feet. The right whale furnishes the bone (baleen) so much in common use, and called "whalebone." This bone is taken from the mouth and upper jaw of the whale, and is set along laterally, in the most exact order, several inches apart, decreasing in length from the centre of his mouth, or the arch of his palate, and becoming shorter farther back, while towards the lips the bone tapers away into mere bristles, forming a loose hanging fringe or border. At the bottom of this row of bone, where it penetrates the gum, and from eighteen to thirty inches downward, we find a material that resembles coarse hair, entwining and interlacing the bone, and thus forming a sort of network, and so thick that, when the whale closes his lips to press out the water, the smallest kind of fish are caught in the meshes, and are unable to escape. Indeed, the edges of the bones, or slabs, as they might be termed, are fringed with this coarse hair, and it extends to their extremities, as may be seen in the rough state when landed from whale ships.