306 ALLEN: NEW ENGLAND WHALEBONE WHALES. 



records would seem to indicate. There is some evidence, too, that of late years the Hump- 

 backs as well as the Finbacks have become fewer or have deserted these coasts. Such, at all 

 events, is the observation of Captain H. L. Spinney whose great familiarity with the conditions 

 about Cape Elizabeth lends weight to his statement that "with the driving away or extermina- 

 tion of the small fish" through over-fishing or other causes, "the whales have dropped out 

 of notice." Indeed, he has seen no Humpbacks in local waters for twenty years past. Under 

 the occurrence of the Finback, I have quoted further from Captain Spinney's letters to me on 

 this matter. 



In the table on page 309 I have summarized what definite records of New England Hump- 

 backs I have found. 



1757. On November 5th, one Jasher Taylor of Yarmouth, Mass., made affidavit before 

 the town clerk of having struck but lost a Humpback Whale, evidently near that shore. 



1826. About October 26th, a Humpback Whale came into the outer harbor at Nantucket, 

 and was seen spouting, and throwing up its flukes as it dove. Although two boats were at 

 once manned and sent in pursuit, the approach of night made it necessary to abandon the 

 chase (Nantucket Inquirer, Oct. 31, 1825). 



1827. The Portsmouth Journal gives a detailed account of a whale that had gone up 

 the Piscataqua River beyond the Portsmouth Bridge, N. H., about three miles from the sea, 

 and seemed unable or unwilling to repass the bridge in order to reach the ocean again. It was 

 finally attacked and killed by the citizens and brought to Portsmouth (Nantucket Inquirer, 

 June 16 and 23, 1827). The ridge on the back and the crenulate outline of the flukes seem to 

 identify it as a Humpback though allowance must be made for certain discrepancies in meas- 

 urements given. 



Two were killed on the Nantucket Shoals during the first ten days of August, by the sloop 

 Rapid (Nantucket Inquirer, Aug. 11, 1827). 



1836. A note in the Providence Courier makes mention of a whale that had been seen 

 several times off Newport, R. I., during the last of June. It was finally captured in Newport 

 Harbor, "north of the Asylum; it measures fifty feet in length, and is of the Humpback species 

 and is supposed to be the same which was seen off Pawtuxet on Wednesday morning last." 



1840. In December, 1840, a Humpback Whale, that made some fifty barrels of oil, was 

 killed in Provincetown Harbor (Alexander Young: Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers, 1844, 

 p. 119, footnote). 



1841. According to a report in the Boston Transcript, the steamer Huntress saw a large 

 school of Humpbacks not far from Cape Elizabeth, Maine, about the first week in June (Nan- 

 tucket Inquirer, vol. 21, no. 47, June 12, 1841). The boat passed close to one of about forty 

 feet in length. 



1844. A skeleton, mounted and preserved in the Museum at Niagara Falls, New York, 



