THE WHALEBONE WHALES OF THE WESTERN NORTH ATLANTIC. 71 



In his list of whaling vessels under date of 1789, Starbuck notes that 8 vessels 

 sailed from Cape Cod for the Strait of Belle Isle. One of these arrived in the 

 home port October 6th, two others also in that month, and one in August. 1 



In the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society are various other 

 references to the whale fishery, but very little regarding the whales themselves. 

 The following are the most important : 



In an address to King James II. by the Colony of New Plymouth, signed by 

 Thos. Hinckley, October, 1687, we find this note: 



" There are also some small whales, or part of them, sometimes in some 

 winters cast on our shore some whereof making, with much labor, seven or eight 

 barrels of oil, and some between that and twenty, which have been some help to 

 the pool 1 of those poor towns planted on the Cape, being the barrenest part of the 

 country." 3 



A letter of Saml. Maverick to Sampson Bond (in the Winthrop papers), 

 dated from New York, May 30, 1669, states of New England : 



" Coddfish is found in abundance on this coast; above 20 whales gotten this 

 Spring." 3 



The Winthrop papers also contain a letter from Wait Winthrop to Fitz-John 

 Winthrop, dated January 27, 1 700, as follows : 



" The winter has bin so favorable that they have killed many whales in Cape 

 Cod bay ; all the boates round the bay killed twenty nine whales in one day, as 

 som that came this week report ; as I came by when I was there last one company 

 had killed thre [3], two of which lay on Sandwich beach, which they kild the 

 day before, and reckned they had kild another the same day, which they expected 

 would drive on shore in the bay." 4 



In 1749 was published a work entitled "A Summary Historical and Political 

 of the British Settlements in North America," by Wm. Douglass, 5 in which the 

 author inserts two " digressions" concerning whales and the whale fishery. Though 

 covering but a few pages and repeating one another to a considerable extent, they 

 contain valuable data regarding the whales of the Atlantic Coast, and especially 

 the Right whale. The matters touched upon are the number of kinds of whales 

 recognized by New England whalers, the characters of the Greenland Right whale, 

 New England Right whale, Finback, Humpback, and " Scrag " whales ; the mi- 

 grations and habits of different species ; changes in habits due to excessive fishing 

 and differences in temperature in different winters; fishing stations ; and kind of 



1 STARBUCK, p. 187. ' IbiJ.(^), 7, p. 318. 



3 Mass. Hist. Coll. (4), 51, p. 78 * Ibid. (6), 5, p. 55. 



* DOUGLASS, WM., A Summary, Historical and Political ... of the British Settlements in 

 North America. 2 vols. London, 1749-53. 8. Published again in 1760. 



This work was originally published in 1747 in smaller form and much briefer. There was no 

 cetological matter in the imperfect copy which I examined in the Library of Congress. Allen 

 states that there appears to have been another edition in 1755. 



