1908.] Mien, The North Atlantic Right Whale. 281 



lations were imposed in other cities of the Basque Provinces. It is further 

 recorded, lie tells us, that "in accordance with custom," the "King should 

 have a slice of each whale" taken, etc., which he regards as a further indi- 

 cation of the antiquity of the fishery. He also cites documents in which is 

 recorded a list of the whales killed by the boats of the single port of Lequeitio 

 from 1517 to 1661, and also similar records kept at other ports, which indi- 

 cate that the whales were already declining in numbers off the Basque 

 coast. He says: "It is clear that the whales, close along the coast, became 

 very scarce in the middle of the seventeenth century, when entries at Leque- 

 itio cease, and the Basque sailors then began to seek the means of exercising 

 their special craft by making long voyages, even to the Arctic regions. Such 

 voyages were occasionally made at a still earlier period. It is stated by 

 Madoz that a pilot of Zarauz named Martin de Echeveste was the first 

 Spaniard who visited the banks of Newfoundland, and that, according to a 

 memoir written by his son, he made 28 voyages from 1545 to 1595, the year 

 of his death." * " 



EARLY RECOGNIZED BY WHALEMEN AS DISTINCT FROM THE GREEN- 

 LAND WHALE. 



At about this time (1596) the Arctic, Bowhead, or Greenland Whale, 

 first became known to Europeans, and soon, on account of its easier capture, 

 greater yield of oil and whalebone, and especially its greater abundance, 

 this species became the chief basis of the Northern Whale-fishery, prose- 

 cuted with so much industry for the next three centuries. In consequence 

 of its discovery we obtain our first definite information respecting the dis- 

 tinctive characters of the Right Whale of temperate waters, after it had 

 practically reached commercial extinction. Previous records fail to give 

 any satisfactory clue to its distinguishing features, and it is only through 

 these early comparisons of the two species that we first become aware of 

 their differences; it was two centuries and a half later before they were 

 properly set forth through the study of actual specimens by competent 

 naturalists. That the two species were recognized by the whalemen of the 

 early part of the seventeenth century as two distinct kinds of whale is evident 

 from the earliest comparative references to them, as shown by the following 

 transcripts, which possess exceptional historic as well as scientific interest. 



We first meet with tangible evidence of the recognition of whalebone 

 whales in the "Commission for Thomas Edge,. . . .appointed to go as. ... 

 Factor in the Ship called the Mary Margaret, . . . for the killing of Whale 



i Markham, I. c., pp. 972, 973. 



