140 ALLEN: NEW ENGLAND WHALEBONE WHALES. 



about the 1st of April. Two boats were made ready and three days later several Right Whales 

 appeared near the same place. The boats at once started in pursuit and one of them came 

 nearly within striking distance when its rudder broke, so that the whale escaped (Nantucket 

 Journal, Apl. 8, 1897). 



1909. On January 15th, a small Right Whale, nearly 35 feet long, came into Province- 

 town Harbor and entangled itself in one of the fish-traps, where it was killed by a bomb-lance. 

 Local report states that the whale had been seen in the bay for a day or two previous. This 

 specimen I saw five days later at Provincetown, and it was afterward brought to Boston and 

 exhibited by some enterprising young undertakers who injected it thoroughly with formalin. 

 One of the men at Provincetown, who had been once himself a whaler, vouchsafed the informa- 

 tion that this was a "runt" or "scrag" whale, a term that formerly much mystified the system- 

 atists, who concluded from the accounts of whalers, that the "scrag" must be a distinct 

 species, for which, indeed, Cope even erected a new genus (Agaphelus). I have elsewhere 

 given notes and measurements of this specimen, and the sketch shown on Plate 9 is drawn 

 from these. 



1910. Mr. D. C. Stull, of Provincetown, tells me that a Right Whale was seen in the 

 waters off that port in the spring of this year, but it was not captured. He further says that 

 they are more often seen in the spring, but of late years few have been observed. An old 

 captain at Nantucket likewise informs me they are now of much rarer occurrence off those 

 shores than formerly, and that the spring is the season when they are most apt to appear. 



1913. The Keeper at the U. S. Life Saving Station on Muskeget Island told me that 

 "about three weeks ago" or about the 24th of May, two were seen together off the south shore 

 of that islet but no one was prepared to give them chase. 



From the table opposite, the numerous Long Island records have been omitted so that it 

 refers wholly to the coast of Massachusetts .and Rhode Island. It is curious that I have come 

 upon no specific records for the Right Whale from the rocky shores of Maine, although Hitch- 

 cock includes it without comment in his nominal list of the Mammalia of that State. 1 Bigelow 

 has shown (1914), however, that the northwestern part of the Gulf of Maine is relatively poor 

 in plankton, which may in part account for this. 



A survey of the foregoing records and table shows that the Right Whale is practically 

 absent from the New England waters during the summer and fall from early June until Octo- 

 ber. The single September record is of a Right Whale found dead off Newburyport, Mass., 

 about the first of that month, 1838. When this species was more plentiful than now, the first 

 individuals doubtless appeared in our waters during the latter half of October, for at Long 

 Island, according to the letter of Lord Cornbury in 1708 (see antea, p. 132) the whalemen there 



1 Hitchcock, C. H. Proc. Portland Soc. Nat. Hist., 1862, vol. 1, p. 66. 



