486 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



attention of the whalers was becoming diverted to the Green- 

 land Whale." 



Summarizing the pursuit of this whale in the North Atlantic, 

 Sir Sidney Harmer (1928) writes: "The Biscay Whale has thus 

 been successively hunted in the Bay of Biscay, in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Newfoundland and New England, off Iceland, and 

 to the north of Norway during a period of at least 700 years 

 (1100-1800). In all the localities in question its numbers 

 diminished, the industry terminating about 1700 on the Euro- 

 pean side of the Atlantic and about 1800 on the American side. 

 It had become excessively rare, and for many years it was 

 believed to be extinct." Nevertheless it eventually recuperated 

 in the next half century and a few were killed annually, about 

 ten a year, at the Scottish whaling stations, between 1908 and 

 1914. However, "it does not seem to have reached anything 

 like its former abundance." 



The second phase of whaling centers about the bowhead or 

 Greenland whale. This is a larger species than the right 

 whale, with a more arched skull accommodating its 12-foot 

 plates of whalebone, and the blubber encompassing its body is 

 deeper. It is confined to Arctic waters, from the Gulf of St. 

 Lawrence northward to the seas about Spitsbergen and Jan 

 May en in the east, and to Davis Straits, Lancaster Sound, and 

 the Alaskan and neighboring waters in the west. It was 

 slightly migratory, keeping close to the edge of the pack ice, 

 which it followed a short distance south in winter and north 

 again in spring. Although known to the Icelanders in the 

 thirteenth century, and later apparently to the Basque fisher- 

 men who reached the Gulf of St. Lawrence, it was not until 

 1611, when Thomas Edge was sent by the English Muscovy 

 Company to Spitsbergen, that its intensive pursuit really began. 

 So valuable were these whales for their yield of oil and "bone" 

 that in later years even the capture of a single whale might 

 cover the expenses of the voyage for a small vessel. The 

 flocking of whalers to Spitsbergen waters made it necessary 

 even by 1618 to allot sections of the coast to the English, 

 Dutch, Danish, Hamburgers, and Basques. So abundant were 

 the bowheads in the bays of Spitsbergen and Jan Mayen that 

 the ships were anchored in some convenient situation "and 

 generally remained at their moorings until their cargoes " of oil 

 were completed. The whales were killed near shore and the oil 



