514 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



iron steamers fitted with a whale-cannon in the bow and steam 

 winches for handling the "line," a stout hawser attached by 

 an iron ring in the slot of the harpoon shank. The whales when 

 shot were then "fast" to the steamer, and if not very soon 

 killed they could be played until they were exhausted, and then 

 lanced from a boat. Since the rorquals usually sink when dead, 

 there was an immediate advantage over the earlier method of 

 awaiting the return of the carcass to the surface buoyed up by 

 gases of decomposition; for the dead whale could be towed at 

 once to the shore station, to be there disposed of. This method 

 of whaling was at first carried on extensively on the Norwegian 

 coast, then extended to Spitsbergen waters. In the last decade 

 of the nineteenth century several stations sprang up on the 

 south coast of Newfoundland. Here finback and blue whales 

 were at first abundant, and additional "factories" were set up 

 on the east coast and along the coast of southern Labrador. 

 However, the supply of whales soon became scarcer, and most 

 of the stations closed, although a number of others have con- 

 tinued in operation on the Irish coast and in British Columbia 

 and Alaska. In the early years of the present century, with 

 the discovery that fin whales abounded in the seas near South 

 Georgia, the South Shetlands, and South Orkneys, activities 

 became in large part transferred to the Southern Hemisphere. 

 Here the industry has flourished, so that in recent years more 

 than half the whales annually killed are taken in this region. 

 According to the figures compiled by Sir Sidney F. Harmer 

 (1931) for the year 1928-29, the total kill of finback whales for 

 the world was 9,132, of which 6,689 were taken in the Antarctic. 

 Statistics for the years from 1925 to 1929 in the general regions 

 of South Georgia and neighboring seas show that there was a 

 marked decline in sexually mature females amounting to 20 per 

 cent in the last over the first year. It seems very likely on 

 further study that "whales do not wander at random through- 

 out the Antarctic area, but are to some extent separated into 

 assemblages which have preferences for particular localities. " 

 The result of singling out the largest animals in hunting is to 

 reduce the number of mature whales in any given assemblage, 

 so that a gradual decline is noticed among this class. 



There is accumulating evidence that in the Southern Hemi- 

 sphere, as presumably also in the Northern, there is a migration 

 of these whales into higher latitudes with the coming of sum- 



