414 NATURAL SCIENCE [June 



tember the ' Investigator,' whilst struggling in the ice in Banks Strait, 

 between the north of Banks Land and Melville Island, saw two 

 Eight Whales going to the westward, apparently on their return 

 journey to Bering Sea, Thus there seems every probability that 

 the Pacific whales do visit the Polar Archipelago and return to their 

 native seas ; but they reach this, the limit of their journey in an 

 easterly direction, so late in the season that it seems unlikely they 

 should mingle with, or, perhaps, even more than occasionally meet 

 with, the contingent from Baffin Bay. 



There are several apparently well-authenticated instances on 

 record of harpoons having been found in whales killed on the Pacific 

 side of the globe, which were identified as having belonged to the 

 Greenland (West Greenland ?) whalers.^ G. Brown Goode, in the 

 volume of the Census Report of the U. S. Commission of Fisheries 

 for 1887 (p. 97), says that whales have been taken in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Point Barrow with harpoons in them bearing the marks 

 of vessels that had been pursuing the fishery in the vicinity of Davis 

 Strait, and gives the details of such an occurrence. Scoresby also 

 mentions some instances of supposed Pacific whales having been 

 killed in Greenland ; but I do not attach much importance to them, 

 since the stone lances and bone harpoons on which he relies, and 

 which are attributed by him to the Esquimaux of the Pacific coast, 

 might almost as well have had their origin, perhaps many years 

 previously, seeing how long lived these cetaceans are, on the shores 

 of Baffin Bay. Admitting the instances quoted to be genuine, they 

 merely go to prove that should an interchange of Atlantic and Pacific 

 whales take place it is much more likely to be by way of the ' North- 

 west Passage ' than along the shores of Asia and Europe. That 

 the Right Whales inhabiting the two seas are specifically distinct 

 there is no reason to suppose ; some racial difference there may be, 

 but even this has never been clearly defined. 



T. Southwell. 



10 The Crescent, Norwich. 



^ See Eschricht and Reinliardt, p. 46. 



