SEAL-HUNTING JAN MAYEN SEALING- GROUNDS. 501 



this port varies greatly in different years, being only four in 

 1865, and twelve in 1868, but notwithstanding the fact that the 

 number of vessels was three times greater in 1868 than in 1865, 

 the catch was less than one-third as large as in 1865. Mr. 

 Brown gives* the following statistics relating to the Dundee 

 sealers : 



In 1874, the Dundee sealers are said to have taken 46,252 

 Seals ;J in 1875, 45,295 Seals, valued at 27,026; and in 1876, 

 53,776 Seals, valued at 34,332. 



The Spitzbergen sealing-fleet from British ports, says Mr. 

 Brown, "meets about the end of February in Bressa Sound off 

 Lerwick, in Zetland ; it leaves for the north about the first week 

 in March, and generally arrives at the ice in the early part of 

 that month. The vessels then begin to make observations for 

 the purpose of finding the locus of the Seals, and this they do 

 by crawling along the edge of the ice, and occasionally pene- 

 trating as far as possible between 70 and 73 N. lat.; then 

 continue sailing about until they find them, which they generally 

 do about the first week of April. If they do not get access to 

 them, they remain until early in May, when, if they intend to 

 pursue the whaling in the Spitzbergen sea that summer, they 

 go north to about 74 N". lat. to the 'old sealing/ or further still 

 {even to 81 N.) to the whaling. Most of them, however, if not 

 successful by the middle of April, leave for home to complete 

 their supplies in order to be off by the first of May, to the 

 Davis's Strait Whale fishery. . . . 



"The number of Seals taken yearly by the British and Con- 

 tinental ships (principally Norse, Dutch, and German) in the 



*Man. Nat. Hist., Geol., etc., of Greenland, 1875, Mam., p. 68, footnote. 

 t"Up to the llth of April," and hence including only part of the catch of 

 that year. 



J. Geograph. Mag., vol. i, 1874, p. 386. 

 Baird's Ann. Eec. Sci. and Indust., 1876, p. 389. 



