The right whale was so called because it was supposed to be the “right” whale to capture. It differs from the sperm whale chiefly from the fact that it has long strips of whalebone in its mouth which catch the small fish for food, the whalebone serving in place of the teeth of the other species. A right whale usually has about five or six hundred of these parallel strips, which weigh in all about one ton; they are over ten feet long, are fixed to its upper jaw, and hang down on each side of the tongue. These strips are fringed with hair, which hangs from the sides of the mouth and through which the whale strains the “brit,” on which a right whale feeds. The “brit” is a little reddish shrimp-shaped jellyfish which occurs in such quantities in various parts of the ocean that often the sea is red with them. With its mouth stretched open, resembling more than anything else a Venetian blind, a sulphur bottom or right whale scoops, at a speed of from four to six miles an hour, through the “brit” just under the surface and thus sifts in its search for food a tract fifteen feet wide and often over a quarter of a mile long. As the whale drives through the water much like a huge black scow, the sea foams through the slatted bone, packing the jellyfish upon the hair sieve. When it thinks it has a mouthful it raises the lower jaw and, keeping the lips apart, forces the great spongy tongue into the whalebone sieve. It then closes its lips, swallows the catch and repeats until satiated. Another difference between the sperm and the right whale is that the latter has two spout holes instead of one. The sperm whale is found in the warm waters off the coasts of Chili, Peru, Japan, New Zealand, Madagascar, California, and Brazil; in the Caribbean, China, and Red Seas, in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf; off the Azores, Java, Galapagos, Society, Sandwich, Fiji, and Samoan Islands; and off the Cape de Verdes. The right whale is found in the high latitudes of the Arctic Ocean, in Baffin’s Bay, in the Ochotsk Sea, near Tristan d’Acunha and the Desolation Islands, and in the Japan Sea. There were many other cruising grounds, but these were the most frequented. The finback is even longer than the other varieties, but whalers rarely attack it owing to the thickness of the blubber and also owing to the fact that it swims so fast that, to use a favorite expression of whalemen, it “will run the nails out of the bottom of the boat.”