772 MODIFICATIONS OF ASPECTS OF ORGANIC NATURE 



ranean whales ^, not comprehending in their number the right 

 whale, Balcena mystketus^ are not whales which would either them- 

 selves prey so largely or exclusively upon the small invertebrata 

 alluded to by MiddendorfF, — to say nothing of those very mu^h 

 smaller, upon which the phenomenon of phosphorescence so much 

 more largely depends, — or be themselves so unrelentingly pursued 

 by man for the sake of their oil. And secondly, without dwelling 

 upon any such quantitative relations as the size of the microscopic 

 * animalcula' just alluded to may suggest, it is clear that the square 

 area of the Mediterranean makes up a space for the extirpation 

 from which even of so large an animal as a ' whale ' a very con- 

 siderable fleet would have been required. We know the numbers 

 and the tonnage of the ships which, till the discovery of petro- 

 leum ^ in large and available quantities, formed the whaling fleets 

 of quite recent times, 1849— 1850, the American whalers in the 

 Sea of Okhotsk alone numbering 250 ^ three-masted vessels, with 

 a minimum tonnage of 500 tons ; but of any such whale-slaying 

 machine having ever existed in the Mediterranean we have, within 

 my knowledge, no record whatever. Now the capacity of the 

 ancient writers for ' not marking withal' matters of interest to the 

 modern naturalist, can scarcely be overrated ; but it did not affect 

 matters relating to war and the chase so much as such trifles as 

 Stonehenge and the peaceful though colossal aqueduct nearNimes*. 

 And as a matter of fact, we find in those writers abundance of 

 references made to the means employed for the capture of the 

 tunny, a form of the chase which is in no way more exciting, more 

 useful for illustration and metaphor, nor even more lucrative, than 

 would that of the whale have been if it had been carried on to any 

 appreciable extent in the large sea on the shores of which so much 

 of the history of the world has been written and acted. The Greek 

 word KTyreia means a fishery, not of Cetacea, but of tunnies. 



^ The principal larger cetacea of the Mediterranean are piscivorous dolphins, such 

 as Belyhinus tursio, DelpMnus globiceps, Delphinus orca; it is at least open to doubt 

 whether such whales as the Balsenopterae and the sperm whale can be considered as 

 anything more than occasional visitants of Mediterranean waters. See Wagner, 'Die 

 Geographische Verbreitung der Saugethiere,' ' Abhandl. d. 2 Classe d. Ak. d. Wiss. 

 Munchen,' iv. Bd., Abth. i. ; and Sundevall, 'Die Thierarten des Aristoteles,' 1863, 

 p. 88; 'Aristoteles' Thierkunde,' Aubert und Wimmer, Bd. i. pp. 73-74> 1868, 



^ See Marsh, ' The Earth as modified by Man's Action,' 1874, p. 103. 



2 See Middendorff, I. c, p. 849. 



* Marsh, I.e., pp. 426-427. 



