240 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1946 
Okhotsk, the northern part of the Bering Sea, and in the Arctic Ocean 
north of the Bering Strait and along the northern coast of Alaska 
and Canada. According to Harmer it. appears never to go far from 
the edge of the northern ice, nor to undertake extensive migrations 
into warmer water during its breeding period. Esricht and Rein- 
hardt considered it to be a migratory animal insofar as it shows a very 
regular seasonal movement to the north or south as the ice advances 
or retreats, and Townsend points out that it may actually move farther 
south than the records of catches suggest, for the species was not 
hunted in winter (at least in the North Pacific). In the North Atlantic 
it may occasionally have penetrated as far south as Newfoundland, 
but it does not occur off the north of Norway or any part of the west 
European seaboard. 
It seems possible that this interesting species will slowly increase 
in numbers again. The International Whaling Statistics (1930, 1931) 
record that at Spitzbergen a specimen was taken in 1911, and that 
in the northeast Pacific 2 were taken in 1923 and 25 in 1924. Accord- 
ing to Clarke (1944) it is increasing in the Beaufort Sea (Canadian 
Arctic) and schools are occasionally reported. 
(2) Hubalaena glacialis, E. australis, ete. 
Fraser (1937) uses the term “black right whale” to include the 
North Atlantic right (2. glacialis or biscayensis), the southern 
right (#. australis, etc.) and the North Pacific right (2. japonica, 
etc.), and it will be convenient to use the same term here. 
Like the Greenland right, these whales grow to a length of not more 
than about 60 feet, but they are distinguished by a smaller head, and 
the whalebone is shorter though of a similar fine texture. They have 
been hunted from the earliest times, and although they have not been 
reduced to quite such a small remnant as the Greenland whale, they 
are now protected by international agreement and thus have not been 
available for research in recent years. Records of their distribu- 
tion, however, have been summarized in some recent publications, and 
the following notes are drawn principally from J. A. Allen (1908), 
G. M. Allen (1916), Collett (1909), Harmer (1928), Townsend (1935), 
and the International Whaling Statistics. 
The black right whales are primarily inhabitants of a comparatively 
restricted zone in temperate or cold temperate waters, but the latitudes 
and seasons in which they were caught show a movement toward the 
Poles in summer and toward the Equator in winter. The North At- 
lantic right was formerly taken in winter off the Basque coast, and 
in summer it appears in the records of northwest European stations 
as far north as the north of Norway. On the American side it is 
