WHALE CHARTS. lil 
whale conducted upon a scientific plan is about 1690, when it 
was commenced by the American colonists. In 1775,ships were 
first sent out from ports of Great Britain, but for some years it 
was necessary to appoint an American commander and _ har- 
pooner until competent officers could be reared. At the same 
early date the sperm fishery was chiefly prosecuted in the 
Atlantic, but Messrs. Enderby’s ship “ Emilia” having rounded 
Cape Horn in 1788, first carried the sperm whale fishery into 
the Pacific, where its success opened a wide and fruitful field 
for future exertions. As our whalers became better acquainted 
with the South Sea, many valuable resorts were discovered. In 
1819 the “Syren” (British) first carried on the fishery in the 
western parts of that great ocean, and in the year 1848 the 
American whaler “Superior,” Captain Roys, penetrated through 
Behring’s Straits into the Icy Sea, and opened the fishery in 
those remote waters. The year after no less than 154 vessels 
followed upon his track, and the number has been increasing 
ever since. At present the Americans are the people which 
carries on the whale fishery with the greatest energy and good 
fortune. While of late years only thirty or forty British sail 
have been employed in the Pacific, our cousins “across the 
Atlantic ” numbered in the year 1841 no less than 650 whalers, 
manned by 13,500 seamen. One of the causes of their success 
may be, that while the whale fishery in England is carried on 
by men of large capital, who are the sole proprietors of the ship, 
the American interest in one vessel is held by many men of 
small capital, and not unfrequently by the commander and 
officers. It must, however, not be forgotten that the Australian 
colonies, being more conveniently situated than the mother 
country, fit out many ships for the whale fishery, which is 
besides conducted in several permanent stations along the coasts 
of New Zealand, &e. 
Whale charts have of late years been drawn, on which the 
best fishing grounds at different seasons are delineated. These 
maps are not only useful guides for the fishermen, but promise 
the future solution of the still undecided question of the migra- 
tion of whales. While some naturalists are of opinion that the 
cetaceans, flying from the pursuit of man, abandon their old 
haunts for more sequestered regions, others, like M. Jacquinot 
(Zoologie, Voyage de U Astrolabe et de la Zelée) believe that if 
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