Excerpt from The Marine Mammals of the North-Western Coast of North America: Described and Illustrated, Together With an Account of the American Whale-Fishery The Marine Mammals of the North-Western Coast of North America: Described and Illustrated, Together With an Account of the American Whale-Fishery was written by Charles M. Scammon in 1874. This is a 393 page book, containing 123253 words and 119 pictures. Search Inside is enabled for this title. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This reprint of a 19th century classic of American zoological study and the single most important historical work on marine mammals of the West Coast. Scammon sets out to give readers detailed technical information about different species of marine mammals. Though he does this with the eye of a whaler out to hunt these animals, his descriptions strangely have all of the playfulness and sensitivity of a naturalist. The text is divided into three parts: a species-by-species account of whales and dolphins (including physical descriptions, a discussion of their habits, and also a quantification of their economic value), a similar section for other sea mammals (sea elephants, sea lions, seals, sea otters and walruses), and then a thorough discussion of the history of whaling