180 



THE SEA. 



"killers" often attack the whale, and worry it like a pack of dogs, and sometimes kill it. The 

 whalemen regard these creatures as important allies, for when they see from the look-out that 

 a whale has been " hove-to " by them they are pretty sure of capturing it. The killers show 

 no fear of the boats, but will attack the whale at the same time ; and if a boat is stove in, 

 which often happens, they will not hurt the men when in the water. The Australian natives 

 about Twofold Bay say the killers are the spirits of their own people, and when Ihoy see 

 them will pretend to point out particular individuals they have known. Some are very large, 

 exceeding twenty-five feet ; they blow from the head, in the same manner as the whale. 



The homes of whales are hardly known. Where the northern whale breeds has long been 



a puzzling question among whalemen. It is 

 a cold-water animal. Maury asks : " Is the 

 nursery for the great whale in the Polar Sea, 

 which has been so set about and hemmed in 

 with a ledge of ice that man may not trespass 

 there ? This providential economy still further 

 prompts the question, Whence comes all the 

 food for the young whales there? Do the 

 teeming whalers of the Gulf Stream convey it 

 there also, in channels so far in the depths of 

 the sea that no enemy may waylay and spoil 

 it in the long journey? It may generally 

 be believed that the northern whale, which is 

 now confined to the Polar Sea, descended 

 annually into the temperate region of the 

 Atlantic, as far as the Bay of Biscay, and 

 that it was only the persecution of the whale- 

 FISHING FOR swoRD.-FisH. fishers which compelled it to seek its frozen 



retreat. This opinion is now shown to be 



erroneous, and to have rested only on the confounding of two distinct species of whale. Like 

 other whales, the northern is migratory, and changes its quarters according to the seasons; and 

 the systematic registers of the Danish colonists of Greenland show that often the same 

 individual appears at the same epoch in the same fiord. The females of the southern whale 

 visit the coasts of the Cape in June to bring forth their young, and return to the high seas in 

 August or September. It was supposed that the migration of the northern whale was for a 

 similar purpose. This, however, is not now considered to be the case. Its movements are 

 attributed to climatal changes alone, and especially to the transport of ice into Baffin's Bay. 

 It lives entirely in the midst of glaciers, and therefore is found in the south during winter and 

 in the north during summer. The whale-fishery has diminished its numbers, but not altered 

 its mode of life. It is stated now that the whale believed to have visited the North Atlantic 

 Ocean is a totally different species, a much more violent and dangerous animal than the 

 northern whale, also smaller, and less rich in oil. The fishery for the latter ceased towards the 

 end of the last century, but it is thought to be not wholly extinct. On September 17th, 1854, 

 a whale, with its little one, appeared before St. Sebastian, in the Bay of Biscay ; the mother 



