388 



tions in 1861, under the title " Om Nordhvaleri," in the 

 Transactions of the Royal Danish Society of Sciences, 

 and we have already referred to the translation of their 

 invaluable paper in the volume of " Recent Memoirs on 

 the Cetacea," edited by Prof. Flower. Since then the 

 subject has been treated of by MM. Gervais and 

 Van Beneden in their great work " Osteographie des 

 Cetaces" and by M. Fischer in the " Annales des Sciences 

 Naturelles " for 1871. 



It has always been known that a flourishing Whale- 

 fishery was carried on by the Basques in the Bay of 

 Biscay and the English Channel, as far back as the eighth 

 and tenth centuries. These hardy and intrepid fishermen 

 are said to have invented the harpoon, and it is certain 

 that it was from them that the early Dutch whalers 

 learned the use of that weapon. But the Whales became 

 scarcer and scarcer, and the pursuit was gradually diverted 

 to the Arctic Sea. The very natural conclusion to which 

 Cuvier came, and which has been shared by most suc- 

 ceeding naturalists, was that the persecuted animals had 

 retired from the temperate to the polar regions, whither 

 they had been followed by their relentless assailants. 



But HH. Eschricht and Reinhardt have been able to 

 prove that the Greenland Right- Whale has not changed 

 its habits or resorts within the last hundred years, the 

 official records of the Danish colonies in Greenland show- 

 ing that it frequents the same stations, and appears and 

 disappears at exactly the same seasons of the year as it did 

 ninety years ago. These facts seemed to point to the 

 conclusion that the Right- Whale, now nearly exter- 

 minated in the temperate regions of the North Atlantic, 

 was of a distinct species from the true B. mysticetus of the 

 Arctic Circle, and as such it had always been regarded 

 by the whalers. In old Icelandic manuscripts, mention 



