australis_, feed among swarms of minute pelagic creatures, which they engulf in their huge mouths, led the ancients to believe and assert that they fed upon water only. When the Whale feeds it moves along with some velocity, taking in huge mouthfuls of sea water with the contained organisms, which are then strained off by the whalebone and left stranded upon the tongue. Unlike its congener, the southern Right Whale, _B. australis_,[242] is world-wide in distribution, avoiding only the Arctic regions. Where the Greenland Whale is found _B. australis_ does not exist. The principal differences which it shows from _B. mysticetus_ are firstly in the relatively shorter head and shorter and coarser whalebone. In the second place it has more ribs, fifteen pairs as against thirteen; but there is apparently some little confusion in the matter of ribs. An additional rib at the end of the series {360} is apt to get lost, and in the skeleton of so huge and unmanageable a beast there is nothing more unwise than to insist upon, as specific characters, what may be due merely to defective preparation. This Whale has often, and the Greenland Whale also, a rough horny protuberance upon the snout known as the "bonnet." The causation of this is not clear. It has been spoken of as "a rudimentary frontal horn." But this suggestion of an Ungulate affinity can hardly be accepted. It seems to be more like a kind of corn. This Whale was once more abundant on the coasts of Europe than it is to-day; it was much hunted by the Basques in past time. The Whale which frequented the Bay of Biscay was usually called the Biscayan Whale or _B. biscayensis_; but there is probably no specific difference. Among the small towns which fringe the Bay, it is very common to find the Whale incorporated into the armorial bearings. "Over the portal of the first old house in the steep street of Guetaria," writes Sir Clements Markham,[243] "there is a shield of arms consisting of Whales amid waves of the sea. At Motrico the town arms consist of a Whale in the sea harpooned, and with a boat with men holding the line." Plenty of other such examples testify to the prevalence of the whaling industry on these adjoining coasts of Spain and France. It appears that though the fishery began much earlier--even in the ninth century--the first actual document relating to it dates from the year 1150. It is in the shape of privileges granted by Sancho the Wise to the city of San Sebastian. The trade was still very flourishing in the sixteenth century. Rondeletius the naturalist described Bayonne as the centre of the trade, and tells us that the flesh, especially of the tongue, was exposed for sale as food in the markets.