WHALE HUNTING WITH GUN AND CAMERA 



of these at one time. Still the catch has steadily decreased 

 and in 1913 only two hundred and twenty-two whales were 

 taken. 



One of the arguments in favor of indiscriminate whaling 

 has been the theory that whales had the whole world to 

 draw upon and that the depletion in any one locality would 

 soon be supplied by overflow from another. To a slight ex- 

 tent this may be true, for there seems some reason to be- 

 lieve that whales do now and then pass from the Pacific 

 to the Atlantic, 1 but on the whole whales are restricted in 

 their range as other animals 2 and extermination in one place 

 means extermination in that locality for all time. Another 

 fallacy was the belief that the supply of whales was prac- 

 tically limitless and that one might "slay and slay and slay" 

 continuously. There is not a more mischievous term than 

 "inexhaustible supply," and certainly none more untrue. So 

 we see our inexhaustible forests on the verge of disappearing, 

 our inexhaustible supplies of coal and oil daily growing less, 

 and the end of the inexhaustible supply of whales in sight. 

 Man is recklessly spending the capital Nature has been cen- 

 turies in accumulating and the time will come when his 

 drafts will no longer be honored. It matters not whether 

 the vessel is a bucket or an ocean, one can only take out as 

 much water as it contains and where all is outgo and no 

 income, it is merely a question of time when one or the 

 other will be emptied. 3 



1 "Capt. Bull states that a sulphur-bottom whale shot on the 

 coast of Norway contained a harpoon fired into it on the coast 

 of Kamchatka and that a humpback killed off Aquaforte was 

 found to have in the flesh an unexploded bomb lance fired from 

 a San Francisco whaler in the Pacific." 



2 "For example, the sulphur-bottom is not found or occurs as 

 a straggler on the east coast of Newfoundland; although once 

 common on the south coast." 



3 "The Passing of the Whale." Zoological Society Bulletin, 

 July, 1008, No. 30, supp., pp. 446-447. 



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