EXPEDITION TO SOUTH GEORGIA 245 



companies operating in various harbors along the northeastern seaboard of 

 the island, and more than two thousand men are at work manufacturing oil 

 and fertilizer and other products of the whale's carcass. 



Phenomenal success has attended the whole industry; more than five 

 thousand whales have been towed into the ports of the island in one year; 

 twenty carcasses are sometimes received at a single station during twelve 

 hours; and two and a half million gallons of oil have been tried out at one 

 station during a season, to say nothing of whalebone and guano. Several 

 of the companies have yielded a profit of more than one hundred per cent to 

 the stockholders. And still the whales show slight signs of diminished 

 numbers, although they are said to have become more difficult to capture 

 than they formerly were. At present transportation is maintained between 

 South Georgia and Buenos Aires; a British magistrate resides at Cumber- 

 land Bay, which has been declared a port of entry; and legislation designed 

 to control the destruction of wild life has finally been enacted. 



The whale taken in greatest numbers at South Georgia is the southern 

 humpback or knoll, which is the mainstay of the industry. The slenderer 

 and less profitable finback is also abundant, and is shot whenever the former 

 species is scarce or shy. The giant blue whale or sulphur-bottom is third 

 in importance, while sperm and right whales are taken more rarely, perhaps 

 only once or twice a year. The height of the whaling comes during Christ- 

 mas season, that is about midsummer. 



The expedition to South Georgia Island, conducted jointly by the Ameri- 

 can Museum of Natural History and the Museum of the Brooklyn Institute 

 of Arts and Sciences, returned last May after an absence from the United 

 States of exactly one year. The itinerary of the New Bedford whaling 

 brig "Daisy," which carried the museums' representative, was pleasantly 

 roundabout, including in its course several West India islands, the Cape 

 Verdes, the Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha, and the uninhabited 

 South Atlantic islet Trinidad, and affording opportunity for field work at 

 each of these interesting tropical localities. The objective point of the 

 voyage, South Georgia, lying in the latitude of Cape Horn, was not reached 

 until November 23, 1912. 



Although the long cruises in the tropical Atlantic, where not infrequently 

 many days passed without sight of a bird, fish or other living creature more 

 conspicuous than a Portuguese man-o'-war, were sometimes monotonous, 

 such periods were well balanced by the occasional excitement of sperm- 

 whaling or blackfish-hunting. The latter cetaceans were frequently en- 

 countered, and a good series of skulls of the tropical species was secured for 

 the museums, the animals being captured with hand harpoons according to 

 the venerable methods of the sperm-whale chase. Blackfish travel in large 

 shoals, often in company with porpoises. I have seen both species, mixed 

 more or less indiscriminatively, swimming along peaceably together in groups 

 of three or four, the individuals of each group almost touching sides. When 



