Everyone knows that during the 14th and 15th centuries, France was the leading country in the world for whaling. Since 1868, this hunt, although so profitable, has been completely abandoned by French shipowners and sailors and has passed entirely into the hands of the English, Americans, even the Japanese and, above all, the Norwegians.
In all the seas of the world, whales are hunted intensively and if we are not careful, a time will come when these large marine mammals: whales, balenoptera, sperm whales, etc. will have almost completely disappeared.
In the time of the ancient harpoon that our Basque sailors knew so well how to use, whaling offered great dangers, moreover, it was not organized industrially as it is today. After the hand harpoon, we had the harpoon gun, which was already a pretty big improvement on the first, but we owe to a Norwegian, Svend Foyn, the invention of a deadly device that everyone uses today; it is a harpoon gun that can shoot, approximately, at 2 or 300 meters, consequently, without any kind of danger for the shooter and the crew of the hunting boat that carries it at its front, and which, itself, is a small robust ship of 4 to 500 tons and an average speed of about 12 knots. A man, placed in a sort of barrel, at the top of the mainmast, and which is called a Crow's nest, observes the horizon with marine binoculars; when he sees the characteristic jet of water that the whales and sperm whales throw, rising to the surface periodically, he warns the captain of the boat who, at full speed, heads towards the indicated point. Having reached a certain distance, one walks very slowly, so as not to frighten the enormous beast, and when the shooter feels within range, he lets loose his cannon shot; the harpoon penetrates deeply into the flesh of the animal, and as it generally carries an explosive bomb at its end, the bursting of the device kills the whale.

He then only has to tow it, either to a factory on land, or alongside or on the edge of a large factory ship anchored near the shore.
The very thick blubber that covers the body of these animals is cut into immense strips that are brought onto the deck or near the boilers of the factory, cut into small fragments and placed in pressure boilers where the blubber melts to leave as products, on the one hand fluid oils of various qualities, and on the other, more or less significant residues that are dried, crushed, reduced to powder and which constitute whale guano.
In land-based factories, where much more space is available, not only bacon can be processed, but also meat and bones. The yield is much greater and in addition, by calcining and grinding the bones, a bone powder is obtained, rich in calcium carbonate and calcium phosphate, which, mixed with the meat powder, which is highly charged in proportions with nitrogen and phosphoric acid, gives a mixture which constitutes a guano or complete fertilizer, intended for agriculture. If the meat powder were treated in a special way so as to remove almost all of its oil, a product rich in nitrogen would be obtained, perfectly assimilated by animals and which constitutes, in small quantities, a food of choice for domestic animals, such as pigs and poultry. Increasingly, in France, this food powder is used, which for many years had been used in Germany, in Bavaria in particular, in livestock feed. It is known that the mouth of whales is limited externally by a considerable number of horny blades provided with hairs, on each side of the upper jaw and which are called baleen. There are hardly any right whales except for the right whales, today extremely rare, which have baleen of good quality and really interesting. The sperm whale does not have any and the other whales (balaenoptera) only have reduced baleen whose value is much less considerable than that of those of right whales. It must be said, moreover, that the industry has found a way to replace, in an almost general way, all objects made from whale baleen, by infinitely cheaper products, so that the value of these baleen is, at present, relatively low. Good quality whale oil is, today, partly used for the manufacture, with the help of appropriate chemical processes, of a commonly used edible fat.

The head of the sperm whale contains enormous cavities filled with a special fatty liquid, which is called "spermaceti" and which, after a special preparation, is used mainly for the manufacture of expensive candles. In the intestine of these same sperm whales, we find a product which, when it comes out of the intestine, has a terrible odor and which is called ambergris. This product, which is the result of a special secretion of the intestine, currently reaches a value of 13,000 francs per kilogram. When it has lost its bad odor, after a few years, it presents, on the contrary, a light and subtle perfume, which is far from being unpleasant. Ambergris is used dissolved in alcohol, to serve as a binder between the alcohol and the perfumes. Given the tremendous consumption that is currently being made of these products, one must understand how considerable the demand for ambergris is, and, as the world production is quite limited, the prices have risen, little by little, to the rate that we have just indicated.
The world production of whale oil is nearly 900,000 barrels, representing a value of nearly 400 million francs. That of guano is much less important, since it does not reach 30,000 tons, representing a value of nearly 20 million francs.
In this production, it is the Norwegians who, by far, surpass the other peoples, because they have Societies, either purely Norwegian, or half Norwegian and half foreign, which hunt whales almost all over the world. After them, come the English, then the Americans and finally the Japanese. The latter use the whale for consumption. The flesh is, in fact, absorbed, either fresh, or salted or dried; as for the bacon, it is also consumed, sometimes fresh, sometimes salted.
France is still represented in the figures that we have just indicated, only by two Franco-Norwegian companies, which operate on the coasts of Gabon, but very soon, other companies will engage in this remunerative hunt, on the coasts of Mauritania, in the Antilles, in Madagascar.
Whales have given rise, in certain countries, to rather curious legends. To conclude this study, we will make known an Indhinese legend.
Whales are, for the Annamite fishermen, the giants of the waters, for whom they have an almost religious and filial respect, and to whom they show a deference as great as to their greatest Mandarins. They consider whales as immense fish, sent by the "God of the Waters" to protect sailors and take shipwrecked people, as well as the boat, if necessary, on their backs, and carry them to a safe place on the shore. These animals are always preceded by two cuttlefish which, throwing ink around them, have the aim of hiding the whales from the sight of their enemies, and punishing them, themselves, in the event that they commit a serious fault. When an Annamese junk or sampan encounters the carcass of a whale or a neighboring animal; porpoise, dolphin, etc., the crew brings it ashore and the village near which they land attends in its entirety the funeral of this animal, to which they grant a royal character. The skipper of the ship or the first person who met him, considers himself his eldest son and wears the mourning turban for three months and six days, then after the mourning, burns the turban, exhumes the bones of the whale and goes to deposit them in a sanctuary which bears the name that was attributed to royal tombs or to those of very high-ranking officials. These curious legends, of which we have just indicated one, are hardly surprising on the part of primitive peoples, accustomed to seeing especially in the seas, fish of small or medium size and who find themselves, suddenly, in the presence of animals, swimming like fish, but carrying, either teeth, or baleen, sometimes breasts, strange beings, in a word, and which their imagination does not conceive.

A. GRUVEL, Professor at the Museum.

• With whale baleen, we protect ourselves from the rain, we refine the waist and we lift the breasts
• With "spermaceti", we implore the divinities
• With ambergris, with its nauseating odor before treatment, we perfume ourselves