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5 f 
which sunk to the bottom, where the water was five fathoms deep. During 
the struggle the mother became nearly exhausted, having received several 
deep wounds about the throat and limbs. As soon as their prize had set- 
tled to the bottom the three Orcas descended, bringing up large pieces of 
flesh in their mouths, which they devoured after coming to the surface.” 
The common porpoise is a gregarious whale found in both the Atlantic 
and Pacific. It reaches a length of five to six feet and is generally blackish, 
but white on the belly. Like the stormy petrel they have the reputation of 
presaging foul weather, when they sport and chase one another about 
vessels, an instance of which I witnessed in Lynn Canal. 
It seems to be hardly a matter of doubt that whales were first utilized 
only when stranded on shore. The discovery thus made of the economic 
value of many parts of these huge monsters led naturally to their pur- 
suit, either from the shore or open sea. As to the actual date of the first 
active hunting of them there is dispute, the real date of the origin of this 
pursuit being difficult to ascertain. Hakluyt thinks it was practiced on the 
Norway coast as early as A. D. 890. In the first place it probably was 
practiced from the shore. Beddard says, ‘No doubt as soon as the value 
of stranded whales was ascertained they would be hunted in this fashion, 
and then as the shore-coming whales got scarcer they would be pursued 
by the whalers further and further into the ocean”. The American whale 
fishing began as early as the year 1614. At first the animals were pursued 
from the shore; and Nantucket Island was the headquarters of the industry. 
The whales were watched for from a “tall spar’, and when an animal was 
seen to spout the boats immediately set out in pursuit. The whale when 
captured was towed into shore, and the flensing done on the beach. 
Verrill says that, at that time no ships had set forth in quest. of whales 
and the whalemen depended upon those which could be captured from small 
boats and it was not until 1688 that the first whaleship set forth on a true 
whaling cruise. Within a dozen years the sails of the sloops, brigs and 
schooners from Nantucket and other Massachusetts towns were spread to 
the winds of the Atlantic from the Equator to the Arctic Circle. 
Never very abundant, the right whales, that is the Arctic right, or 
Greenland whale, and the North Atlantic whale, of which the oil served to 
light the way of our ancestors and the whalebone to give shapely form to 
the women, have become very rare. In our time the Greenland whale is not 
regularly hunted except in Davis and Lancaster Straits, Hudson Bay, on 
the Northwest Coast of North America about Point Barrow. Even in 
those places it is no longer abundant. The second species of right whale, the 
North Atlantic right whale is at present scarcely more abundant than the 
Greenland whale. In contrast with the foregoing, finbacks and Humpbacks 
abound in all seas, such as the blue whale, the rorquals, the pollack whale, 
the common humpback, and many other less well-known species. The 
cetaceans are at present relentlessly pursued for commercial purposes. 
The finback whale fishery began in 1867, when the celebrated Norwegian 
sailor, Svend Foyn with his destructive machine captured his first whale, 
and in the first year took thirty of them. In less than fifteen years this 
