398 NATURAL SCIENCE [June 



capture of these valuable prizes, and not the study of then- habits, 

 except in so far as such a knowledge would conduce to that result ; 

 and tradition has a very strong hold upon them. It unfortunately 

 happens, too, that these men, who could tell us so much and are per- 

 fectly ready to impart information, owing to their very familiarity 

 with the subject, and perhaps to their regarding much really of 

 scientific value as too trivial to be worthy of mention — are ex- 

 tremely difficult of approach, and it requires no little previous 

 knowledge of the subject to elicit at such interviews all the 

 information possible. Nevertheless, I have to acknowledge with 

 gratitude the invariable kindness I have received from the whaling 

 captains, and the value of the information resulting from many 

 conversations and much correspondence with them extending over 

 many years. 



In so imperfect a sketch as this must of necessity be of so wide 

 a subject, it would be impossible to deal with Cetacean Migration 

 generally, I propose therefore on the present occasion to confine my 

 remarks to one species, the Arctic Eight Whale {Balacna mysticetus), 

 an animal which has been more or less under observation ever since 

 the first decade of the seventeenth century, when it was discovered 

 by Henry Hudson frequenting the seas west of Spitzbergen in 

 great numbers, and became the object of attack l^y men of various 

 nationalities. At first it was hunted from the shore, but as, 

 gradually driven from the bays and fjords, it became scarcer and 

 more wary, its pursuers became more and more enterprising, and 

 followed it farther and farther into the ice-fields. And here I may 

 perhaps be allowed once for all to dispose of the popular idea, so 

 oft repeated and so difficult to eradicate, that the (jreenland Eight 

 Whale formerly frequented the temperate waters of the Atlantic 

 (Icean, and that it has been driven north by persecution, or has been 

 exterminated in the more southerly localities. The true B. 'mysti- 

 cetus, greatly reduced in numbers it is true, and only an occasional 

 visitor in some localities where once it was common, still frequents 

 precisely the same waters in which it has ever been found, and from 

 the nature of its habits must continue to do so, so long as it exists 

 as a species. The whale of the genus Balacna formerly found in 

 considerable numbers from the Bay of Biscay to the North Cape, 

 according to season (for it also was a regular migrant), and still 

 occasionally met with in the waters of the North Atlantic, is a per- 

 fectly distinct species, a fact fully established by the investigations 

 of Eschricht and Eeinhardt. 



It is not my intention to follow the so-called ' Greenland ' Eight 

 Whale into the Pacific, where it is also found ; but the two resorts 

 with which I propose to deal are the northern extensions of the 

 Atlantic Ocean, lying to the east and west of Greenland, reaching 



