I22O 



THE CETACEANS 



Porpoise 

 Hunting 



Formerly porpoises were esteemed in England for their flesh, but 

 they are now taken mainly for their oil, although the skin is also 

 sometimes used. The leather commonly known as porpoise hide is, 

 however, as we have already had occasion to mention, generally made from the skin 

 of the white whale. On parts of the coast of North America, porpoise shooting is 

 regularly practiced by the Indians, and this pursuit affords to the Passamaquoddy 

 tribe their chief means of support. The average yield of oil will be about three gal- 

 lons, and in a good season an Indian may kill from one hundred to one hundred and 



PORPOISE DIVING. 



fifty porpoises. "To make a successful porpoise hunter," writes Mr. C. C. Ward, 

 " requires five or six years of constant practice. Boys, ten or twelve years of age, 

 are taken out in the canoes by the men, and thus early trained in the pursuit of 

 that which is to form their main support in after years. Porpoise shooting is fol- 

 lowed at all seasons and in all kinds of weather in the summer sea, in the boister- 

 ous autumn gales, and in the dreadful icy seas of midwinter. On a calm summer 

 day, the porpoise can be heard blowing for a long distance. The Indians, guided by 

 the sound long before they can see the game, paddle rapidly in the direction from 



