204 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. 



VI. 



The number of hands employed in reducing the blubber to oil, 

 preparing casks, and other incidental labour, may amount to 

 about 100." 



Mr. Frank Austin, a few years ago, read a paper to the Lite- 

 rary and Historical Society of Quebec, on " Some of the Fishes 

 of the St. Lawrence." In this paper, published in the "Tran- 

 sactions" for 1866, it is stated that it gave profitable employ- 

 ment to a good many schooners of from seventy to eighty tons 

 burthen, each manned by eight men. Each schooner carried two 

 boats, twenty feet long, narrow and sharp, with a pink stern. 

 There were two hundred and twenty fathoms of line to each boat, 

 and the proper supply of harpoons and lances. The .species caught 

 was that commonly called the Humi^hach^ and each on an average 

 produced three tons of oil. The mode of capture was somewhat 

 different from that practised by the w^halers who resort to Davis' 

 Straits and Greenland, and it is said that any active man, accus- 

 tomed to the management of boats, could soon become proficient. 

 When approaching the whale in the boats, the men used paddles 

 instead of oars, finding that less noise was made, and that they 

 were thus surer of their prey. It would appear that the whale 

 of the St. Lawrence was even more easily captured than that of 

 Greenland, being if anything more timid and stupid w^hen once 

 harpooned, for sometimes within fifteen minutes after they had 

 been struck, their huge bodies rolled like helpless logs on the 

 water. The oil-yielded in 1864 by the Gaspe fishery was of the 

 value of $17,000. We have no means at hand to say what the 

 returns have been since then, but we have reason to fear that like 

 the porpoise fishery, the capture of the whale has not received 

 that attention which it deserved, nnd that unless new life be im- 

 parted, it will altogether cease to be prosecuted as a regular and 

 remunerative branch of national industry. The valuable walrus 

 fishery was lost by ignorance, which led to the complete extinc- 

 tion of the animal in the St. Lawrence. The whale fishery stands 

 a chance of abandonment from apathy. 



We were struck on reading Sir Richard Bonnycastle's book, 

 published in 1845, by remarkiog the number of whales which he 

 saw on his voyage up and down the St. Lawrence, between Gaspe 

 and Kamouraska. Certainly they do not now frequent the St. 

 Lawrence in such abundance. 



In the Canadian 3Iagazlnc, vol. 1, page 283, will be found as 

 follows : — " About the middle of September (1823) a large whale 



