A small (calf) right whale on the beach at Amagansett, L. I. Note that no dorsal fin is present in this species. ] Since an average sized bowhead yields 2,000 pounds[15] of baleen, a single animal was thus worth $8,000 or $10,000, and if a ship took two or three whales each season a profitable voyage was insured. Although the baleen of the smaller right whale is of excellent quality, it seldom exceeds nine feet in length and consequently this species is not so valuable as its Arctic relative. Footnote 15: A large whale sometimes yields 3000 pounds. Whalebone is used principally in corsets, dress stays, whips, and other articles where strength and elasticity are required, but a few years ago several substitutes, such as “featherbone,” “near-bone,” etc., were perfected; since some of these proved fully as good as, and were very much cheaper than, baleen, it was no longer profitable to outfit expensive vessels and Arctic whaling abruptly ended. Both the bowhead and right whale live upon minute crustaceans, called “brit,” which are strained out by means of the mat of bristles on the inner side of the baleen plates; when the mouth is closed the whalebone folds back on both sides of the tongue, but straightens out again as the great lower jaw is dropped. On the extreme end of the snout the right whale always has an oval roughened area, some two feet in length, called the “bonnet.” This growth is produced by whale lice (_Cyamus_) and barnacles (_Coronula_), and although it is never absent in this species it is not found on the bowhead. Neither of these whales has a dorsal fin or folds on the ventral surface of the body, because their heads are so proportionately large that it is not necessary to increase the throat and mouth capacity by any external modifications. The right whale is found only in temperate waters and does not go into the far north or south. It is frequently taken by the shore whalers on the coasts of Japan, Australia, and South America, and is much less timid than the bowhead; it is also much quicker in its movements and is consequently a more dangerous whale to attack for the men who hunt in small boats with a hand harpoon and lance. The bowhead, on the contrary, is exceedingly difficult to approach and very slow in its movements. It is exclusively a whale of the northern hemisphere, found only in the waters of the Arctic Ocean, Greenland, Hudson’s Bay, and the Bering and Okhotsk Seas. The finest bowhead grounds of today are those north of Bering Strait; as the ice breaks in the spring the whales follow the coast eastward, past Point Barrow, Alaska, as far as Banks Land. In the fall they again pass Point Barrow, going westward toward Wrangle Island, off the Siberian Coast.