332 WHALING 



odour in the milk. But of late years this long and laborious 

 process has proved too expensive to justify itself, so that whale- 

 meat meal, and even whale guano, which was made in much the 

 same way but from the bones and other inferior parts of the 

 beast, are made no longer. 



To-day, in the Antarctic, they use the best of the fresh meat 

 for food, but even so experienced a whaler as Captain Larsen 

 considers it quite too dry and stringy for canning, in spite of 

 the extensive canning of it in Japan and New Zealand and the 

 little we have done in the western United States. It is quite 

 generally agreed, however, that there is no time to be lost be- 

 fore the fresh meat is in cans and sealed ; this would necessitate 

 in South Georgia, not one central cannery, but one at each shore 

 station, and since they have already found the processes of manu- 

 facturing cattle food and guano too expensive, it is hardly likely 

 that they will attempt a whale-meat cannery. Many recom- 

 mendations and considerable legislation concerning the utiliza- 

 tion of the entire carcass have succeeded only thus far: that in 

 various parts of the world whale skin is used for leather (that 

 of the white whale being at once softer and far stronger than 

 the white kid used so commonly for gloves, and other kinds 

 having several excellent qualities to recommend them), and 

 that, in the Antarctic, blubber, meat, and bones are all steam- 

 pressed for the oil that can be got out of them. What remains 

 after that is thrown out upon the sea again and forms, doubtless, 

 the piice de resistance in the diet of the innumerable waterfowl 

 of those bleak shores. 



Such is the technique of the modem Norwegian whaling. 

 The Newfoundland method is only very slightly different, for 

 to-day the Norwegians are the acknowledged master whalemen 

 the world over. About two thirds of the world's whaling com- 

 panies are Norwegian; of the other third nearly all are British 

 or Japanese, and the British companies employ Norwegian 

 whalemen exclusively. Even in Japan the personnel of the 

 modem steam whaler is Norwegian, although there all the shore 

 operations are done by Japanese labour. 



And to hunt whales under a Norwegian gunner is a lesson in 



