[7] FISHERIES OF THE UNITED STATES. 



the darting-gun harpoon ; (3) the hump-back iron ; and (4) the prussic- 

 acid iron. 



(1) The peimitiye Harpoon. — Of this class there are properly 

 two types : the typical harpoon with a fixed head and two barbs, and 

 the harpoon with a fixed head and one barb. These are familiarly 

 known as the "two-flued" and "one-flued" irons. Innovations have 

 been made by hinging or pivoting one or two additional barbs or 

 "flukes" in the rear of the heads of both types. Kone of this class 

 are used at present by American whalemen, except possibly at times 

 the former on the California coast, for raising "sunk" whales. 



(2) The Toggle-Iron. — The improved harpoon has a movable barb, 

 known as the " toggle," pivoted at its center to the anterior end of the 

 shank. When the instrument is to be used, the toggle is adjusted in a 

 position parallel to the shank, and held, with the cutting point forward, 

 by a small wooden peg. When darted into the whale the peg is broken 

 by the resistance upon the whale line, the toggle is thrown at right 

 angles to the shank, somewhat in the form of the letter T, and becomes 

 transfixed in the ligamentous flesh. 



The heads, toggles, or flukes, as they are also termed, may be slot- 

 ted, or recessed, for the reception of the shanks ; or the ends of the 

 shanks may be slotted and the barbs pivoted between the cheeks. The 

 latter is known as the " Temple toggle," or " Temple gig," having de- 

 rived its name from the inventor, a colored man, Lewis Temple, of New 

 Bedford, Massachusetts, who first made this kind of harpoon in about 

 1847 or 1848. Another mode adopted by the early manufacturers for 

 holding the toggle in position when darted, was by means of rope, iron, or 

 leathern grommets, which gave to the instruments the name of " grom- 

 met-irons," or "grummet-irons," as they were more frequently called. 

 The instruments, with heads mortised for the ends of the shanks and 

 held in position with wooden pegs, are exclusively employed by all 

 American whalemen of the present day for fastening the whale to the 

 boat. 



To this class also belongs the present walrus-iron, which is in every 

 particular, with the exception of size, a counterpart of the improved 

 harpoon, and is used by whalemen m the Arctic Seas for the capture 

 of walrus. This kind of harpoon was formerly made with a double- 

 barbed fixed head. 



Friderich Martens, in an account of a whaling voyage to the Green- 

 land fishery during the year 1671, says : " The harpoon for a sea-horse 

 {Trichecus Eosmarus, walrus or morse),* and the launce also, are short, 

 of the length of one span, or one and a half, and an inch thick, and the 

 wooden staff thereof is about six foot long; the harpoon for a whale is 

 much too weak to pierce his thick skin withal, yet both of them are 

 very well tempered and of good tough iron, and not much hardened."! 



* Eosmarus obesus (lUig.) Gill. t Hakluyt Society, vol. 18, p. 90. 



