First & Worst

More than a quarter-century ago a fine big female specimen of the Atlantic right whale (Balaena glacialis) disported herself in the grey winter water near the tip of Long Island. Fifty-four feet long, she was accompanied by her 38-ft. infant, which she paused now & then to suckle. The mother's great head was nearly all mouth, and the vast cavern between her jaws was curtained with hundreds of flat, flexible blades of whalebone. When she was hungry she sounded, swam with mouth agape through shoals of plankton (tiny sea organisms) until the whalebone sieve had collected a toothsome sludge which she licked off with her tongue. She was captured and killed in 1907. Last week Manhattan's American Museum of Natural History placed on exhibition her remains, whalebone and all--largest skeleton of the species ever to pass under the scrutiny of Science.

After 28 years in the museum's storehouses and preparation rooms, the skeleton was hung from the ceiling by seven strands of airplane cable. Dr. Roy Chapman Andrews had to mount a ladder to point out the close-packed whalebone strainer (see cut). Now famed for spectacular expeditions in the Gobi and elsewhere, bald Dr. Andrews recalled that his 1907 expedition to Long Island to reclaim the whale's bones was his first & worst.

Roy Andrews and James Lippitt Clark, another youngster who later became a crack field man for the Museum, went out to Amagansett where the carcass had been beached. The whalers took the blubber and the scientists bought the rest for $3,200. The skeleton remained imbedded in 50 tons of flesh. The weather was bitter cold.

Some fishermen were hired to hack the flesh away with knives. Progress was slow. Day followed dreary winter day. A storm blew up, covered beach and carcass with a brawling smother of surf. Toiling waist-deep in the icy water, Andrews and Clark made fast the carcass as best they could. When the weather cleared the precious remains were finally found buried deep in the sand.

The weather was now so cold that the fishermen refused to work at any price, sat sucking their pipes by a fire. When Andrews and Clark shoveled out sand, the holes filled up with water. With knives they groped blindly in the puddles, taking out segments of backbone one at a time. Finally the fishermen took pity, pitched in, and within a week the bones were rescued and stacked up. But on checking over their chart the museum men discovered that two extremely important bones were missing: the thin little pelvic bones with vestigial thigh bones which show that 60 or 70 million years ago whales had serviceable legs. Andrews and Clark sprinted to the try works where the blubber had already been plumped into a cauldron, fished around until the two little bones were retrieved.

After the mother whale was caught the baby swam unhappily along the shore until it, too, was killed. Its bones were recovered without difficulty, later traded to the British Museum for the skeleton of a dodo.

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