MIGRATIONS OF WHALES — KELLOGG 479 



land bowheads were found as far north as the border of the perman- 

 ent polar pack ice, and in the winter they were found in the vicinity 

 of 65° north latitude. 



From Eschricht (18G6, p. 15) we learn that bowheads keep close 

 to the ice and remain with ice floes or near solid ice even during the 

 coldest part of the year. They rarely quit the ice edge, and as soon 

 as the ice is disrupted in the spring, they force their way north- 

 ward through the field ice. The preference of this whale for ice and 

 waters filled with ice floes seems to explain their absence in winter 

 from the ice- free sea south of Sukkertoppen. Bowheads have been 

 met with off the entrance to Hudson Strait and Resolution Island 

 in April, May, or even as late as the middle of June, and as the ice 

 retreats the old males enter Davis Strait on their northward journey 

 to Disco Bay. 



The records of the West Greenland whaling stations indicate that 

 females and young were less numerous than males on the northward 

 run, although there were instances where females and young were 

 taken in May and July. This and other data led Southwell (1898, 

 p. 406) to conclude that the females and their young followed the 

 western border of the pack ice in Davis Strait. There seems to be 

 some connection between the wanderings of the bowhead and the 

 motion and drift of the ice in Baffin's Bay. Their arrival on the 

 coast of Greenland is contemporaneous with the arrival of huge 

 masses of drifting ice issuing from Baffin Bay, locally known as 

 " west ice." Some of those that have followed the west Greenland 

 coast are found as far north as Omenak Sound (71° N. lat.) in June. 

 When the land floes have broken up, they cross Baffin Bay to join 

 those that followed the western shore and wait for the breaking up 

 of the ice in Lancaster Sound some time in July. These bowheads 

 spread out over Prince Regent's Inlet and the deep channels inter- 

 secting the Northern Archipelago where they spend the summer. 

 Brown (1875, p. 80) reports that "those killed early in the year at 

 Pond's Bay are chiefly young animals." Bowheads have also been 

 met with in the most northerly parts of Bafiin Bay (75° to 78° N. 

 lat.) in July and August. Baffin saw many whales at Wolstenholme 

 Sound (78° N. lat.) at the entrance of Smith Sound in July, 1616, and 

 Ross in 1818 met with whales between 75° and 76° north latitude late 

 in July and on August 16. 



When the ice begins to form in the fall, the bowheads commence 

 their southward migration and the males generally follow the west- 

 ern shore. (Southwell, 1898, p. 406.) Many of these bowheads have 

 been " running " in Eclipse Sound and Pond's Inlet from the end of 

 June to late in August, but they reach Home Bay and Cape Hooper 

 about the middle of September. (Brown, 1875, pp. 79, 80.) They 

 keep close to the ice and work southward to Cumberland Gulf, where 



