March 9, 1922] 



NATURE 



299 



his journey to King Alfred (p. 59). The whale industry 

 if the Bay of Biscay^ depending principally on the 

 Atlantic right whale^ can also be traced back to an 

 fly date, since it was at its apogee in the twelfth and 

 teenth centuries (p. 61). The Basques appear to 

 Ive voyaged to Newfoundland as early as 1372 (p. 64), 

 is anticipating Columbus by more than a century, 

 will perhaps surprise the general reader to learn that 

 oil, a name derived from the Dutch traan, a tear 

 drop, is mentioned as a material " to the great 

 imodity and benefit of this our Realm of England," 

 a grant by Queen Elizabeth, 1576-7 (p. 303). 

 : For nearly three centuries the Greenland whale occu- 

 a position of special importance in the industry, at 

 5t in the neighbourhood of Spitsbergen (from about 

 )4), later in Davis Straits (from 17 18), and in the 

 th Pacific and the Arctic Ocean beyond Bering 

 lits still later (from 1846). The sperm whale 

 industry had meanwhile become so important as to 

 rival that based on the Greenland whale, starting off 

 New England about 1614 (p. 223), and afterwards 

 extending into the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian 

 Oceans. The Pacific grey whale was hunted for a 

 relatively short period off the coast of California, an 

 original method of capture having previously been 

 invented by the Indians. The operations off Iceland, 

 Newfoundland, Japan, the British coasts (on a larger 

 scale than is generally recognised), and Spain are 

 described in the concluding chapter, which also deals 

 with the specially important modern development of 

 whaling, carried on since 1905 in the neighbourhood 

 of the Antarctic continent, as well as off the coasts 

 of South Africa and South America. This subject, 

 of urgent public interest, deserved fuller treatment. 



Dr. Jenkins does not sufficiently emphasise in 

 his work the deplorable reduction in the number of 

 humpbacks within five or six years from the com- 

 mencement of operations off South Georgia, and 

 he seems to regard this species as still very common 

 off the South African coasts (pp. 295, 296). In suggest- 

 ing a winter Antarctic close season (p. 299) he is not 

 up to date, as this measure has recently been authorised 

 by the Colonial Office, while the list of the chief existing 

 southern whaling areas on p. 292 gives no hint of the 

 predominance of South Georgia and the South Shet- 

 lands, nor does it indicate that whaling operations in 

 the South Orkneys, Australia, Kerguelen, and other 

 localities are extinct or of negligible importance. It 

 would scarcely be inferred from the account of the 

 African stations how great has been the shrinkage 

 of the industry within the last decade. The im- 

 poverishment of the natural resources of the world 

 due to the operations of the whalers, and obvious 

 from their own records, might have been explained with 

 NO. 2732, VOL. 109] 



greater emphasis. The statement (p. 234) that the 

 discovery of petroleum in 1859 sealed the fate of 

 American whaling can scarcely be described as the 

 only cause, for the diminution in the number of 

 whales which was taking place must have had some 

 influence in producing this result. 



It is melancholy to compare the existing distribution 

 of whales with their former abundance. The Green- 

 land whale occurred in profusion in the bays of Spits- 

 bergen at the commencement of Arctic whaling, and 

 the Varanger Fjord during March " simply bubbles or 

 boils " with humpbacks (p. 32). Atlantic right whales 

 regularly passed Biarritz towards the end of the 

 seventeenth century (p. 64), while whales were plentiful 

 off New England in 1614, where an early writer speaks 

 of " mighty whales spewing up water in the air like 

 the smoke of a chimney, of such incredible bigness 

 that I will never wonder that the body of Jonah could 

 be in the belly of a whale " (p. 223). These occurrences 

 are now mostly things of the past and though Dr. 

 Jenkins fully recognises the fact, he is perhaps not 

 sufficiently convinced of the danger of extinction. 



The production of whale-oil is usually estimated 

 in barrels, and some discussion of the capacity of this 

 measure would have been useful. The book must 

 be read carefully to discover a reference (p. 244) to 

 barrels of thirty gallons each and a statement (p. 293) 

 that the standard size is now six barrels of oil to one 

 ton. On p. 294 the question is unnecessarily com- 

 plicated by giving the oil production for Natal in 

 pounds for 1909, in barrels and tons for 1910, and in 

 pounds for British South Africa, 1910. Scoresby 

 (1820) had already stated that the ton consisted of 

 252 gallons, and had given experimental estimations of 

 the number of pounds of oil to the gallon at different 

 temperatures ; from his remarks, however, on the gaug- 

 ing of casks and from his list of stores, where he says that 

 the casks should be of sizes suitable for stowage, it is 

 obvious that the barrel was not a definite measure. 

 There is probably considerable uncertainty as to the 

 extent of a catch estimated as so many barrels of oil. 

 The figures given by Dr. Jenkins occasionally 

 arouse doubts as to their accuracy, as on p. 268, 

 from which it would appear that, after deducting 

 the value of the baleen, a blue whale is worth 90/. 

 and the smaller fin whale 1 10/. In other cases sufficient 

 care has not been taken to explain that a statement is 

 no longer correct, as in the account (p. 29) of the Pacific 

 grey whale, which has ceased to be common on the coast 

 of California. Exception may also be taken to p. 265, 

 representing the faciUtation of the capture of the 

 smaller whales as the principal res^ult of the introduction 

 of Svend Foyn's harpoon-gun. The statement (p. 293) 

 that whalebone is worth from 39/. to 45/. a ton is 



