836 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



open water is very wide> the whales may pass at a distance un- 

 noticed, or so far off that it is impossible for a boat to overtake 

 them. 



If there is much loose ice, the crafty animals take advantage of 

 it, and come up to breathe at little holes among the floes where a 

 boat can not reach them. 



As the season advances, the whales grow scarcer, and the 

 whalemen relax their vigilance and pay more attention to the 

 capture of seals, which they shoot through the head when they 

 rise near the boat, securing them with light harpoons before they 

 have time to sink. At this season, also, the whale-boats some 

 times capture walrus and white whales. 



At length several days pass without a whale being seen, and 

 one by one the crews give up looking for them and bring home 

 their boats, until by the first of July the whaling is over for the 

 year, the boats are all in, and everybody is preparing to leave the 

 village for the summer excursions. 







SKETCH OF DANIEL GARRISON BRINTON. 



Br Dr. CHAKLES C. ABBOTT. 



A FEW years prior to the widely spread interest in American 

 archeology that is now taken, there was published in Phila- 

 delphia a small duodecimo volume of two hundred pages entitled 

 Notes on the Floridian Peninsula, concerning which its author 

 states in his preface, " The present little work is the partial result 

 of odd hours spent in the study of the history ... of the penin- 

 sula of Florida/' A " little " book, in one sense, it is true, but far 

 from it in all others, and it remains to-day our best resume of the 

 archeeology of that wonderful peninsula. The author of this vol- 

 ume, but twenty-two years old at the time of its appearance, is 

 the subject of the present sketch Daniel Garrison Brinton. 



Dr. Brinton was born May 13, 1837, at Thornbury, Chester 

 County, Pa., and is of English descent on both the paternal and 

 maternal side. His ancestor, William Brinton, came from Shrop- 

 shire, where the family had lived for many generations. He be- 

 came an early member of the Society of Friends, and emigrated 

 to the colony of Pennsylvania in 1G84. His descendants have 

 generally continued their attachment to Quakerism. 



The life-long interest which he has taken in the study of the 

 American Indians may have been owing to the fact that on his 

 father's farm was a " village site " of some ancient encampment 

 of the Delaware Indians. Many a day of his boyhood was passed 

 in collecting from this and similar localities the broken arrow- 



