HA R D WICKE'S S CIENCE- G O SSIP. 



20I 



and ending on the coast of Labrador at about 55° 

 north latitude. 



The whale-trade, which once employed so many 

 hardy seamen, is now reduced to very narrow 

 limits, and appears to have passed almost entirely 

 into the hands of the English, or rather Scotch. The 

 Biscayans were not content with exterminating the 

 whales found in their own seas, but followed them up 

 to the north ; in 1721 they had twenty vessels in the 

 Greenland fishery from Biscay ; the Dutch also took 

 a large part in the trade ; in Norfolk, Yarmouth 

 and Lynn both sent out vessels. In 1801 twenty 

 ships were employed from the port of Yarmouth in 

 this fishery, and returned from Greenland with rich 

 cargoes; l)Ut heavy losses subsequently occurred, and 

 early in the present century the whale fishery from 

 Yarmouth was abandoned. At Lynn it must have 

 ceased about the same time. During the nine years 

 ending 1818 there was an average of ninety-one 

 English and forty-one Scotch ships employed in the 

 trade ; in 1830 they were reduced to forty-one 

 English and fifty Scotch. 1830 was a very disastrous 

 year in the whale trade ; nineteen British ships were 

 totally wrecked, and twelve seriously injured in that 

 season. The number since then has been gradually 

 decreasing, till at the present time Dundee and 

 Peterhead are the only two ports in Great Britain 

 which are engaged in the whale fishery. Dundee 

 sends out ten iDowe,rful steam-vessels, which leave 

 about the beginning of INIay, and if fortunate in filling 

 up, return about the beginning of November. The 

 expense now incurred renders it necessary that a 

 large number of whales should be taken to make 

 the voyage pay : the Arctic, in her voyage of 

 1873, captured twenty-eight whales, which were 

 estimated to produce in oil and bone jQ'^'i,^^'^, or 

 about ^678 per wliale, the best wliale, a female witli 

 sucker, was estimated at ^1,500, and the smallest at 

 only £\ 10. An average whale produces 9^ tons of 

 oil, a ton measuring 252 gallons, and 7 ft. 6 in. of 

 whalebone ; the longest bone cut of the twenty-eiglit 

 fish was 1 1 ft. 9 in. and the shortest 2 ft. 6 in. Tliis 

 was considered a very successful year. An interesting 

 account of a whaling voyage in the ship Arctic, and 

 full particulars of the mode pursued in taking, and 

 subsequent treatment of the fish, is given by Captain 

 A. H. Markham, in his " Whaler's Cruise to Baffin's 

 Bay." 



The usual length of a full-grown Riglit-whale is 

 about 50 feet ; but Dr. Brown, in his paper on the 

 Cetaceans of the Greenland Seas {P. Z. S., 1868, p. 

 539), gives the dimensions of one which measured 

 65 feet. The general colour is black. The mouth 

 occupies about one-third of the entire length, and the 

 baleen is from 10 to 12 feet long. This baleen, 

 which is found depending from the upper jaw, con- 

 sists of a number of horny plates, placed transversely 

 along either side of the palate ; they are arranged 

 closely together, with the external edge smooth, and ' 



gradually thinning off towards the inner margin, 

 which ends in a fringe of long hair-like fil^-es : the 

 number of laminas is about 360 on each side. * The 

 whale whilst feeding swims along with its mouth open, 

 until it has collected a quantity of the small marine 

 animals which form its food ; then, closing its capacious 

 under-jaw, it forces out the water between the plates 

 of baleen, leaving the captive prey stranded on its 

 huge tongue, when it swallows them at leisure. 

 The food of the Greenland whale consists entirely 

 of small marine animals, particularly a kind of shrimp, 

 found in great abundance in the Arctic seas. This 

 species is believed by Eschricht and Reinhardt to 

 bring forth its single young one (rarely two) about the 

 end of March or beginning of May, and the time of 

 gestation to be thirteen or fourteen months, so that it 

 will bring forth only every other year; Scoresby 

 considers that they go eight or nine months, and 

 bring forth in Februaiy or March, t The young 

 one is supposed to be suckled for twelve months. 

 In disposition the Greenland whale is timid and 

 retiring ; the chief danger in its capture arises from 

 its rapid descent when harpooned ; the line is then 

 carried out with such speed that, should it foul or all 

 run out and not be immediately cut, the boat will be 

 upset or carried under water. It has never been 

 known to attack a boat, but accidents sometimes 

 happen if approached too closely in its death 

 "flurry," which is said to be very terrible to wit- 

 ness. Its fondness for its young is such thut if the 

 "sucker" is killed the old one readily falls a victim, 

 and the whalers do not fail to avail themselves, for 

 their own advantage, of this amiable trait in its 

 character. 



THE COLORADO POTATO-BEETLE. 



{Doiyphora dccciiilineata. Say.) 

 By E. C. Rye, F.Z.S. 



LITTLE thought the American entomologist Say, 

 when, in 1824, he characterized a compara- 

 tively insignificant Chrysomela from the Rocky 

 Mountain region of the Upper Missouri, that his 

 foster-beetle should, in less than the average life of 

 man, so increase and multiply as to outrival the 

 EgyjDtian plague of flies, or that this Yankee " bug " 

 shoidd scare the British lion. Yet so it is ; and our 

 Elizabethan arch-poet, who sjwke of "the poor 

 beetle that we tread upon," woidd, if his spirit re- 

 visited us, by the help of Dr. Slade, or any other 

 medium, find that tables were indeed turned in the 

 Victorian era, and that the beetle is likely to be the 



* By an old feudal law, the tnil of all whales belonged to the 

 Queen, as a perquisite to furnish her Majesty's wardrobe with 

 whalebone (Brown, quoting " Blackstone's Commentaries," 

 vol. i. p. 233, ed._i783). 



T Dr. Brown, in the paper before quoted, states that they 

 couple from June to August, and bring forth in iMarch or April. 



