WHALE COMES ASHORE

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1495, 18 July 1912, Page 6

WHALE COMES ASHORE

NEAR IYAU BAY. i A SEVENTY FEET SPECIMEN". As a tulo gales do not como cmd gi without leaving on record some unusua incident, and surely enough the unusun occurred oil Tuesday night when a larg whale caiiio ashore near Lyall Bay. ] was first reported («t 7 o'clock yesterdu; morning) by a resident, passing the cot poration quarry, that n whale, "one luin drat feet in length," had been stranded At flr.st few believed the report, bu after some had actually seen the moiiste Ilia "joke" idea was promptly dismissei Ols banal and inept. As the story sprea< quite a number of people made their wa; out to the spot, and were rewarded b this very unusual sight. The monster o present lies amongst the rocks on tli shore, right in front of the stone q'uarrj The spot is a little bay, about a mil from tho Lyall Parade, facing south'-eas just beforo tho Queen's Drive turns th point towards Island Bay. At low tid yesterday morning the whale's head wa well out of the water, while the tail wo mostly submerged and appeared to 1: resting on some portion of tho rocky oul crop. As indicated, the true length of th beached cetacean falls short of 100 feel but it is at least 70 feet from the ti of the nose to the end'of tho tail. Th creature lias apparently been considerabl, knocked about the head, and a huge bon is protruding from tho side of tho jaw Die mouth discloses long hair-coverei teeth, these being set close together. Evidently someone has already been ou with a view to exercising proprietar; rights, for deeply carved and cut on th Hue of tho head it the following legend "Hart, Sampson, and Fairway." It is not yet exactly known what specie the whale belongs to, but it seems t wear the outer aspect of a, Rorqual—; whalo of long elongated shape. On th contrary, think , that it is a spern whale, but this species has an oxcep tionally large nose, whereas the strandei monster has a long, sloping, flat nose Judging by tho whale's present condition it has apparently been dead for soun time; or at least prior to its being wash ed ashore. It was thought that probabl; this is the escapee from a recent ICai koura whale-hunt, but the theory is.dis credited, as there arc no liarpoon mark: on tho body. It has <a!so been suggestet that the beast met: its death through tin united attack of porpoises or' black fish as these fish have been known to get in side the whale's mouth and eat the blub ber, eventually killing the whale. On the whole the accepted descriptioi of the Rorqual best tallies with tho ap pearanco of tho storm-tossed creature It has ei small back fill,. and a number of longitudinal corrugations on the throat,