108 THE WHALE AND 



A Bill of Mortality. Yearly DeBtruction. 



cruising ground, the whales will be less con- 

 stantly hunted, and nearly all the calves born 

 will arrive at an age when they can take care 

 of themselves before the old whales are encoun- 

 tered in the summer season by their sworn en- 

 emy, man. He estimates that by three hund- 

 red ships capturing or mortally wounding for- 

 ty whales each, twelve thousand whales are 

 killed in a season ; and as many of these, per- 

 haps full half, are cows with calf, the number 

 of whales to be born and arrive at maturity, in 

 order to make up for this sweeping destruction 

 among them, must be not less than eighteen 

 thousand. He thinks, therefore, that the poor 

 whale, chased from sea to sea, and from haunt 

 to haunt, is doomed to utter extermination, or 

 so near it, that too few will remain to tempt 

 the cupidity of man. 



The history of the sperm whale fishery, from 

 the first, when only five and six months were 

 necessary to complete a cargo upon the Brazil 

 ground, and fifteen upon that of Chili, to its 

 present almost entire abandonment as a sepa- 

 rate business, confirms this calculation. Be- 

 fore the end of the present century, therefore, 

 judging from the past, is it likely that the hunt- 



