COMMON FINBACK WHALE. 211 



1879. — September 12th, four were seen swimming and spouting in Provincetown Harbor 

 (G. B. Goode: Fisheries and Fishery Industries of U. S., 1884, sect. 1, p. 28). 



About November 5th, "a large Finback Whale" was reported as seen by Captain 01)(h1 

 Swain off the south shore of Nantucket (Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror, vol. 60, no. 19, Nov. 

 8, 1879). 



A mounted skeleton in the Museum of Comparative Zoology was obtained at Cape Cod in 

 this year. 



1880. — About March 25th, a large Finback, estimated to yield 25 barrels of oil, was found 

 floating near the South Shoal Lightship, off Nantucket (Nantucket Journal, vol. 2, no. 27, 

 Apl. 1, 1880). 



On April 18th a very large Finback stranded near the Life Saving Station at Wakefield, 

 R. I., according to the record of Mr. H. M. Knowles, Keeper. "Its belly was a yellowish white 

 resembling porcelain" (so a Finback). It was supposed that it had been on exhibition some- 

 where, as its body cavity "contained several kerosene barrels to round it out" (Major E. A. 

 Mearns) . 



A. Howard Clark, writing from Gloucester, Mass., May 13, 1880, says, "Whales have 

 recently been numerous in this vicinity, and shore boats report many of them swimming about. 

 Four dead ones have been towed into this harbor; the largest was 65 feet long." (Bull. U. S. 

 Fish Comm., 1884, vol. 4, p. 404). The last from its length was doubtless a Finback, and 

 the others were probably the same species, in large part at least. 



About June 20th, a Finback some sixty feet long washed ashore on Nantucket to the 

 southward of Maddequecham Valley. Probably it had been killed outside the Cape by the 

 Provincetown whalers (Nantucket Journal, vol. 2, no. 30, June 24, 1880). 



"Early in March, 1880, there came into Provincetown Bay and harbor immense quanti- 

 ties of herring and shrimps. They were followed by a great number of finback whales, which 

 were here most of the time in greater or less numbers until about the middle of May, when 



they all left Early in June immense quantities of sand eels {Ammodytes) came in our harbor 



and bay [Provincetown] and remained here several days. About the 10th of June there appeared 

 plenty of whales, feeding on the sand eels." Forty-eight in all were killed by the Provincetown 

 whalers by the use of bomb-lances (A. Howard Clark, in Goode's Fisheries and Fishery Indus- 

 tries of U. S., 1887, sect. 2, p. 230). 



A further echo of the activities of the local whalers comes in a note from Gloucester, Mass., 

 under date of July 23d: "Recently a carcass of a Finback Whale 55 feet long drifted ashore 

 on Long Beach, some ten miles from here, opposite Milk Island" (A. Howard Clark: Notes 

 on the Fisheries of Gloucester, Mass. Bull. U. S. Fish Comm., 1884, vol. 4, p. 407). The jaws 

 of what is probably this specimen, are now exhibited in the museum of the Peabody Academy 

 at Salem. 



