426 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Resolved, That the American Society of Vertebrate Paleontologists will aid 

 in any way practicable those measures legislative, international and local which 

 will prevent the now imminent extermination of the great marine vertebrates, 

 especially the cetaceans and manatees, seals, green and other turtles on the 

 coasts of the United States, or on the high seas. 



This resolution was also adopted as its own by the American Asso- 

 ciation for the Advancement of Science at its Chicago meeting, and 

 very similar action has been taken by the New York Zoological Society 

 looking to needed action by congress. Many evidences of a world-wide 

 interest are at hand. 



The Thousand-year Hunt of the Whales 

 The first of the great cetaceans to be hunted, was the Biscayan 

 whale, Balcena glacialis. Its capture was begun in the ninth century 

 by the Bisques and soon taken up by others. Following extermina- 

 tion in the Gascoigne Bay, the hunt was slowly pushed northward to 

 Finland and Iceland, and along the western Atlantic; it being even 

 possible that whalers visited the Newfoundland shores long previous 

 to the discoveries of Columbus. The relentless warfare to which the 

 Biscayan whale was subjected for hundreds of years culminated in the 

 sixteenth century and only stopped short of total extinction through the 

 extension of the fisheries to the far north and discovery of the greater 

 value of the Greenland whale, Balcena mysticetus. 



The capture of the latter began in 1612 in the open waters between 

 Spitzbergen and Greenland, and soon extended to Davis Strait and 

 Baffin Bay. After two hundred years of unceasing pursuit this whale 

 was driven to the remote places of the Arctic Ocean, and is now so 

 nearly extinct that its recovery in numbers is doubtful. It may be 

 too late to save this form; although from 1669 to 1778 it yielded to 

 14,167 Dutch vessels 57,590 catches worth $16,000,000 net. But this 

 is only one of the many killings of the proverbial goose that laid the 

 golden eggs, and a cruel enough one too. Scoresby says, in speaking 

 of this timid whale of strictly arctic range, that it shows an affection 

 for its young which " would do honor to the superior intelligence of 

 human beings " ; but being a trader as well as observer he adds that 

 " the value of the prize . . . can not be sacrificed to the feelings of 

 compassion ! " 



After the virtual extermination of these two more valuable species 

 the merciless hunt was diverted to the much wilder finback whale, 

 Balcenoptera physalis, now in turn with still other forms destined to 

 extinction if restrictive measures are not soon taken. For in these 

 days of steam, and electric light that robs the long arctic night of its 

 terrors, the whale chase goes on very fast. The shot harpoon, 1 the 



1 Invented by Sven Foyn about 1870, by which time, owing to wildness and 

 scarcity of the whales, the older methods of capture were no longer capable of 

 returning a profit. Foyn was at first a sealer. 



