214 WHALES AND DOLPHINS 



the two species of Balcena agree with each other, and there is 

 also a close similarity in the appearance of the flippers and 

 tail flukes. 



Whales of the species we are now describing may reach a 

 length of nearly 60 feet. The largest of 67 Atlantic Right 

 Whales landed at the Scottish whaling stations between 1908 

 and 1914 was recorded as 59 feet long. 



The different varieties are, as already mentioned, very 

 widely distributed throughout the oceans, both in the north 

 and south, but apparently never in tropical seas. Thus, the 

 Biscayan Right Whale has been recorded, in addition to 

 the locality which gives it its name, from places as far distant 

 from each other as Newfoundland and Norway, the northern 

 limit of its occurrence being roughly the southern limit of the 

 distribution of the Greenland Right Whale in Arctic seas. 

 The southern form frequented the coasts of South Africa, 

 Australia, New Zealand, South Georgia, and was also very 

 abundant at one period in the Indian Ocean. In the Pacific 

 many Southern Right Whales were captured off Chile, and a 

 few stragglers off the coast of California. In the north of the 

 Pacific the Right Whale had an area of distribution extending, 

 on the west coast of America from Vancouver Island to the 

 Aleutian Islands, and on the west side of the Pacific it was 

 plentiful off Kamchatka and in the Okhotsk Sea. 



It will be noted that, in the foregoing description of distri- 

 bution, the past rather than the present tense predominates ; 

 this is because although at one time the whales were abundant 

 in the areas mentioned, it is not so now. In the history of 

 the Black Right Whale fishery the sequence of events described 

 for the Greenland Whale fishery is repeated again and again ; 

 it is a story of abundance at first followed by decimation and 

 disappearance of the stock later, with the result that the 

 fishery was no longer profitable. 



The fisher folk inhabiting the shores of the Bay of Biscay 

 were the first to practise the pursuit of the great whales in a 

 systematic manner. From the earliest times the Biscayan 

 Right W T hale frequented the coast of the Basque provinces 

 and, according to Sir Clements Markham, who has written 

 of this fishery, in the twelfth century the trade was well 

 established. Six towns along the coast have the whale 



