202 ALLEN: NEW ENGLAND WHALEBONE WHALES. 



North Atlantic, a statement that may readily be believed by one who has seen the myriads of 

 them that occasionally are cast on our shores. In August, 1911, for example, I witnessed such 

 a tremendous destruction of young herring a few inches long, that they were heaped in wind- 

 rows along the shores of Rye Beach, N. H., for miles. Indeed so great was the quantity of 

 dead fish, that steps had to be taken by the people residing near, to bury some part of them. 



Mitchell notes that on the Norwegian and Scottish coasts herring are frequently pursued 

 or accompanied by schools of whales and other animals that prey upon them. He specifically 

 mentions that in the Bay of Cromarty, in 1780, a large shoal of herrings appeared, accompanied 

 by numbers of whales and porpoises beating the water into a foam for several miles, giving it 

 the appearance as if ruffled by sudden land squalls. Again, in 1816, on the coast near Fraser- 

 burgh, a shoal of herring was accompanied or pursued by about one hundred whales of various 

 sizes which remained seven days, from the 24th to 30th of August, in the same locality. The 

 herring were of good size, full of milt and roe. The whales may thus indicate to the fishermen 

 the presence of these fish, as in case of one who, fishing off Stornoway, Scotland, while the 

 other boats were unsuccessful, was induced, through the appearance of a whale at a certain 

 distance, to cast his nets near the whale, with the result that he took forty-eight barrels of 

 very superior herring, though the other boats obtained only small quantities. 



On the New England coasts the Finback Whales pursue the herring as on the European 

 shores, and the appearance of both is frequently simultaneous. The springs of 1880 and 1881 

 were remarkable for the great numbers of these whales that came in shore along the Massa- 

 chusetts and Maine coasts apparently in pursuit of herring. Thus Clark 1 relates that "early 

 in March, 1880, there came into Provincetown Bay and harbor immense quantities of herring 

 and shrimps. They were followed by a great number of finback whales which were here most 

 of the time in greater or less numbers until about the middle of May, when they all left. . . . 

 Early in June immense quantities of sand eels (Ammodytes) came in our harbor and bay and 

 remained here several days. About the 10th of June there appeared plenty of whales feeding 

 on the sand eels." Mitchell writes that herring feed on the sand eels so that possibly the 

 whales may have been in pursuit of herring, which in turn were preying on the sand eels. Clark, 

 however, does not mention herring with them. He later says that in the spring of 1880, these 

 whales were so "abundant in Ipswich and Massachusetts Bays... that fishermen in their 

 dories were in some cases alarmed for their own safety, as the whales were darting about in 

 pursuit of schools of herring." 



In the latter half of October, 1874, large numbers of whales, apparently Finbacks, were 

 present in Vineyard Sound, and off Cuttyhunk, Gay Head, and Neman's Land, pursuing the 

 herring that were there in great abundance for the fall spawning. 



1 Clark, A. Howard, in Goode's Fisheries and Fishery Industries of U. S., 1887, sect. 2, p. 230. 



