the fourteenth century the Biscayans made whale-venison their staple, and Norway to-day has more than one establishment which turns out canned whale.  Newfoundlanders find whale-meat a welcome change from cod perpetual, and I have seen the Indians of Cape Flattery eat it when it hailed you a mile to windward and had more than begun to twine like a giddy honeysuckle.  Now, enterprising people are talking of canning whales’ milk, a dense yellow fluid like soft tallow.  When the milk-maid goes out to milk a whale she must take half a dozen barrels along as milking pails.  The Eskimo like it.  Soon the soda-fountains on Fort Macpherson and Herschel Island will bear the legend, “Whale cream soda” and “Best Whale Milkshake.”

To have an even superficial knowledge of the commercial products of the whale, one must learn of baleen, of whale-oils and spermaceti, of ambergris, whale-guano, whale-ivory, and whale-leather.

What do we do with baleen?  It so combines lightness, elasticity, and flexibility, that nothing yet invented adapts itself so perfectly to all the requirements of the fashionable corset.  Whalebone whips are made from single pieces of baleen seven or eight feet long.  A whalebone horsewhip costs from fifteen to eighteen dollars and will outlast a dozen cheaper persuaders.  The Sairy Gamp umbrella of the last generation, which boasted whalebone ribs, never “broke its mighty heart” in a rainstorm (and incidentally could never be shut up tight).  Flexible steel has taken the place of whalebone in many of the arts; but new avenues of usefulness open up to baleen.  Out of it artificial feathers of exquisite lightness and wigs or toupees are made.  Shredded into fine filaments, baleen is now woven in with the other fibres in the manufacture of the finest French silks, imparting resilience and elasticity to the rich material.  A Chicago paper of the date of this writing advertises: 

WHALEBONE TEETH $5
A GREAT DISCOVERY
THE NEW WHALEBONE PLATE WHICH IS THE LIGHTEST
AND STRONGEST SET KNOWN
DOES NOT COVER THE ROOF OF THE MOUTH
Guaranteed ten years
YOU BITE CORN OFF THE COB

Spermaceti, the solid waxy body carried round in the Cachalot’s head in solution, is a valuable whale-product.  Bland and demulcent, spermaceti is employed as an ingredient in ointments, cosmetics, and cerates.  Spermaceti candles of definite size form the measure of electric light, giving rise to the phrase “of so many candle-power.”  Present-day spermaceti is both a saving and a destructive agent.  Large quantities of it are used in Europe in the manufacture of ecclesiastical candles, and part of the same consignment may help to make self-lubricating cartridges.