104 DESTRUCTION OF FISH. 
year by the American and the European vessels engaged in 
this fishery would form an island of no inconsiderable dimen- 
sions, and each one of those taken must have consumed, in the 
course of his growth, many times his own weight of mollusks. 
The destruction of the whales must have been followed by a 
proportional increase of the organisms they feed upon, and if we 
had the means of comparing the statistics of these humble forms 
of life, for even so short a period as that between the years 
1760 and 1860, we should find a difference possibly sufficient 
to suggest an explanation of some phenomena at present unac- 
counted for. 
For instance, as I have observed in another work,* the phos- 
phorescence of the sea was unknown to ancient writers, or at 
least scarcely noticed by them, and even Homer—who, blind 
as tradition makes him when he composed his epics, had seen, 
and marked, in earlier life, all that the glorious nature of the 
Mediterranean and its coasts discloses to unscientific observa- 
tion—nowhere alludes to this most beautiful and striking of 
maritime wonders. In the passage just referred to, I have 
endeavored to explain the silence of ancient writers with re- 
spect to this as well as other remarkable phenomena on psycho- 
logical grounds; but is it not possible that, in modern times, 
the animalculze which produce it may have immensely multi- 
plied, from the destruction of their natural enemies by man, 
and hence that the gleam shot forth by their decomposition, or 
by their living processes, is both more frequent and more bril- 
liant than in the days of classic antiquity ? 
722, measuring 230,218 tons, in 1846. On the 31st December, 1872, the num- 
ber was reduced to 204, with a tonnage of 47,787 tons, and the importation 
of whale and sperm oil amounted in that year to 79,000 barrels. 
Svend Foyn, an energetic Norwegian, now carries on the whale fishery in 
the Arctic Ocean in a steamer of 20 horse-power, accompanied by freight- 
ships for the oil. The whales are killed by explosive shells fired from a small 
cannon, The number usually killed by Foéyn is from 35 to 45 per year. —The 
Commerce in the Products of the Sea, a report by Col. R. D. Cutts, communi- 
cated to the U. 8. Senate. Washington, 1872. 
* The Origin and History of the English Language, &c., pp. 423, 424. 
