50 



DISCOVERY 



For purposes of comparison, let us take an example 

 from each period — that which may roughly be defuied 

 as the period of " plot," in which the story told was 

 of primary importance; and that of "phase" or 

 " episode," in which the method of the story-teller 

 mattered to a degree which would make the authors a 

 lit study for the psycho-analyst. In Mary Postgale, 

 by Rudyard Kipling, there is an episode of bomb- 

 dropping. After the explosion, Maiy and Nurse Eden 

 heard " a child's shriek, dying into a wail " : 



" Nurse Eden snatched up a sheet drying before the 

 fire, ran out, lifted something from the ground, and 

 flung the sheet round it. The sheet turned scarlet, 

 and half her uniform too, as she bore the load into the 

 kitchen. It was little Edna Gerritt, aged nine, whom 

 Mary had known since her baby days. 



Am I hurted bad ? ' Edna asked, and died 

 between Nurse Eden's dripping hands. The sheet fell 

 aside, and for an instant, before she could shut her 

 eyes, Mary saw the ripped and shredded body." 



Between them, restraint and suggestion are the 

 principal factors in creating the emotional effect here. 

 Which simply means that the writer who cares more 

 for matter than manner generally does well with both, 

 for it is the actual incident described that leads to 

 restraint and suggestion. Against this we may set a 

 passage from Henry James's The Real Right Thing, 

 in which the author is speaking of George Withemore, 

 who has been asked to write the life of Ashton Doyne, 

 deceased ; nor is the author caring for anything half so 

 much as the actual words he is speaking : 



" He was not a little frightened when, even the first 

 night, it came over him that he had really been most 

 affected in the whole matter, by the prospect, the 

 privilege and the luxury of this sensation. He hadn't, 

 he could now reflect, definitely considered the question 

 of the book — as to which there ^vas here even already 

 much to consider ; he had simply let his affection and 

 admiration — to say nothing of his gratified pride — 

 meet to the full the temptation Mrs. Doyne had offered 

 him. 



" How did he know without more thought, he might 

 begin to ask himself, that the book was on the whole 

 to be desired? What waixant had he ever received 

 from Ashton Doyne himself for so direct and, as it were, 

 so familiar an approach ? Great was the art of bio- 

 graphy, but there were lives and lives, there are subjects 

 and subjects. He confusedly recalled, so far as that 

 went, old words dropped by Doyne over contemporary 

 compilations, suggestions of how he himself dis- 

 criminated as to other heroes and other panoramas. 

 He even remembered how his friend would at moments 

 have shown himself as holding that the ' literary career ' 

 might — even in the case of a Johnson and a Scott, with 

 a Boswell and a Lockhart to help— best content itself 

 to be represented. The artist was what he did — he 

 was nothing else. ..." 



With this t^'pe of short story in the ascendancy 

 (more or less modified, of course, because no writer 

 except James has dared to pursue the method to its 

 logical extreme), it was inevitable that what is a distinct 

 and significant branch of art should have suffered a 

 serious decline. There was still a demand for the short 

 story of plot and incident, and while the older maga- 

 zines vanished one by one from sheer lack of material, 

 a new and much inferior type of periodical sprang up 

 and took advantage of a public taste which, in the 

 desperation .of hunger, had forgotten to discriminate 

 between art and mechanics. The consequence was that 

 a veiy inferior type of short -story writer sprang up also. 

 {To be continued) 



Modem Whaling 



By J. Travis Jenkins, D.Sc, Ph.D. 



Formerly whales were hunted from rowing-boats by 

 means of a hand-harpoon and lances. The chief 

 species hunted in this fashion were the Right or True 

 whales {Balanidcs), and the Cachalot or Sperm whale 

 {Physeter). Owing to over " fishing," these species 

 are now so rare that it no longer pays to fit out vessels 

 for their capture. Whaling was consequently rapidly 

 dying out until the invention of a harpoon-gun by a 

 Norwegian sailor, Svend Foyn, in 1864. The capa- 

 bilities of this gun were not at first realised, and it 

 was not until about 1880 that any considerable de- 

 velopment took place. This development was due to 

 the fact that with the harpoon-gun it was possible to 

 kill and capture Finner whales, whose rapid swimming 

 and tendency to sink when dead rendered them 

 immune to the attacks of the old whalers. 



The three chief whales, all species of Finners, on 

 which the modern whalers of the North Atlantic depend 

 are the Blue whale (Balcenoptera sibhaldi), the largest 

 of all living creatures, which sometimes attains a 

 length of 85 feet ; the Common Rorqual [Balcenoptera 

 musculus), and the Sei whale. The first, like the other 

 species of Finners or rorquals, spends the winter in 

 the open sea, approaching the coast at the end of 

 April or the beginning of May. The Common Rorqual 

 grows up to 70 feet in length, and is the commonest 

 of the large whales off the British coasts. It feeds 

 on fish, and is frequently seen among the herring 

 shoals. The Sei whale is a smaller edition of the 

 Common Finner, attaining a length from 40 to 50 feet. 

 Until recently it was considered the rarest of the 

 European whales, but in 1906 no less than 326 speci- 

 mens of this species were taken by the Norwegian 



