All the gunners who have hunted in the South Atlantic or Pacific tell remarkable tales of the enormous blue whales killed off Kerguelen and South Georgia Islands. I have no doubt that this species reaches 90 or possibly 95 feet, but the stories of 115- and 120-foot whales are certainly myths. As Dr. Lucas aptly says, “All whales shrink under the tape measure.” [Illustration: An eighty-two foot blue whale at Vancouver Island. The mouth is about nineteen feet in length, and the outer edges of the baleen plates are well shown. ] Undoubtedly the principal reason why whales are able to attain such an enormous size is because their bodies are supported by the water in which they live. A bird is limited to the weight which its wings can bear up in the air. A land animal, if it becomes too large, cannot hold its body off the ground or move about readily and is doomed to certain destruction. But a whale has to face none of these problems and can grow without restraint. The sperm and right whales float when killed, but the fin whales usually sink although the specific gravity of their bodies is but little more than that of water. Because whales live in a supporting medium their young are of enormous size at birth, in some instances the calf being almost half the length of its mother. I once took from an 80-foot blue whale a 25-foot baby which weighed about 8 tons. The calf was just ready for birth and was fully formed, the whalebone being about three inches long. At Aikawa a sperm whale 32 feet in length contained a fœtus 14 feet, 8 inches long, and in Alaska while a 65-foot finback whale was being drawn out of the water upon the slip she gave birth to a 22-foot baby, which, of course, was dead. Not long ago I read an account of a happy event of this sort which was said to have occurred on the Labrador coast, where the baby whale flopped off into the water and swam away. This was, of course, not true, for the fœtus would die with its mother, but when such stories once find their way into print they are difficult to stop. The wonderful strength of the blue whale is almost beyond belief, and I have listened to many stories from Norwegians which I would not dare repeat here although personally I believe them to be true. J. G. Millais, Esq., has given an interesting account of a blue whale hunt, which I am quoting in full since it shows, in some degree, of what this magnificent animal is capable: [Illustration: The open mouth of a blue whale. Ten or twelve men could stand in the mouth, but the throat is only eight inches in diameter. ]