360 WHALING IN THE BAY OF BISCAY chap. 



is apt to get lost, and in the skeleton of so huge and unmanage- 

 able a beast there is nothing more unwise than to insist upon, as 

 specific characters, what may be due merely to defective prepara- 

 tion. This Whale has often, and the Greenland Whale also, a 

 rough horny protuberance upon the snout known as the " bonnet." 

 The causation of this is not clear. It has been spoken of as " a 

 rudimentary frontal horn." But this suggestion of an Ungulate 

 affinity can hardly be accepted. It seems to be more like a kind 

 of corn. 



Tliis Whale was once more abundant on the coasts of Europe 

 than it is to-day ; it was much hunted by the Basques in past 

 time. The Whale which frequented the Bay of Biscay was usually 

 called the Biscayan Whale or B. hiseai/cnsis ; but there is prob- 

 ably no specific difference. Among the small towns which fringe 

 the Bay, it is very common to find the Whale incorporated into 

 the armorial bearings. " Over the portal of the first old house 

 in the steep street of Guetaria," writes Sir Clements Markham,^ 

 " there is a shield of arms consisting of Whales amid waves of 

 the sea. At Motrico the town arms consist of a Whale in the 

 sea harpooned, and with a boat with men holding the line." 

 Plenty of other such examples testify to the prevalence of the 

 whaling industry on these adjoining coasts of Spain and France. 

 It appears that though the fishery began much earlier — even in 

 the ninth century — the first actual document relating to it dates 

 from the year 1150. It is in the shape of privileges granted 

 by Sancho the Wise to the city of San Sebastian. The trade 

 was still very flourishing in the sixteenth century. Eondeletius 

 the naturalist described Bayonne as the centre of the trade, and 

 tells us that the flesh, especially of the tongue, was exposed for 

 sale as food in the markets. 



M. Fischer,- who, as well as Sir Clements JMarkham, has 

 given an important account of the wlialing industry on the 

 Basque shores, quotes an account of the methods pursued in the 

 sixteenth century. It was at Biarritz — or as Ambroise Pare, 

 from whom Fischer quotes, spelt it, Biaris — that the main 

 fisheries were undertaken. The inhabitants set upon a hill a 

 tower from which they could see " the Balaines which pass, and 

 perceiving them coming partly by the loud noise they make, and 



1 Proc. Zool. Soc. 1881, p. 969. 

 ^ Actes Linn. Soc. Bordeaux, 1881. 



