206 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 



There is perhaps not much more to be gained from this 

 table than from the other ; but, on the whole, there does 

 seem to be some slight indication of a tendency for the more 

 abundant captures of the earlier years, and especially of 

 1908, to be concentrated in the south, while the northern 

 captures were made in the years when the species was less 

 abundant, on the whole, in our Scottish waters. 



Putting two and two together we know a good deal 

 about the migrations of the Nordcaper and of its haunts at 

 different seasons of the year, and the recorded data seem 

 to tally with one another in a very satisfactory way. It is 

 well known that the season of the old fishery on the 

 Biscayan coasts was from about October to February ; and 

 the few stragglers which have reappeared, in comparatively 

 recent years, here and in neighbouring waters, agree in 

 their dates of arrival with this history and tradition. Thus, 

 in the Mediterranean, the Tarento whale was got in 

 February ; another, recorded by Pouchet and Beauregard, 

 off Algiers also in February ; another, off the north-west 

 coast of Africa, in December (Van Beneden). On the 

 Basque coast itself Eschricht's whale was got in January, 

 and another (Markham) in February (1878). A single 

 exception is apparently to be found in one seen, but not 

 captured, off Guetaria in July 1850, according to Markham ; 

 but there may well be some doubt as to the identity of the 

 species. At the Azores, according to Van Beneden, the 

 season is much the same, or perhaps a little later, namely, 

 from December to April. This whale is, in short, at home 

 in winter in the temperate regions of the North Atlantic, 

 somewhere about 40 N., and this constitutes the southern 

 part, so far as we are concerned, of its area of distribution. 1 

 It comes to our own western coasts and to those of Ireland, 

 as we have seen, chiefly in the month of June. In the north 

 of Norway, where it got its name of Nordcaper, and where 

 Guldberg has found remains of its skeletons plentifully at 

 Vardo and elsewhere, the old books of Martens and Zorg- 



1 We leave out of account, meanwhile, the question of whether our 

 Nordcaper be specifically identical with the "Southern Right-whale," 

 the B. australis of authors. 



