1908.] Allen, The North Atlantic Right Whale. 313 



winter they were taken in Massachusetts Bay, off the coast of Long Island, 

 in Delaware Bay, and along the coast of North Carolina. There is, however, 

 scant evidence that they were ever numerous off Florida or around the Ber- 

 mudas. 



It is this species which formed the chief basis of the Basque Whale 

 fishery "from time immemorial/' 1 and of that of all the seafaring nations of 

 the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries. The pursuit was so persistent 

 that it became exterminated on the Atlantic coast of Europe by the end 

 of this period, and a like fate later overtook it on the western side of the 

 Atlantic. 



As early as the middle of the sixteenth century the Basque whalers were 

 engaged in its capture in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where, and in the neigh- 

 boring waters, they maintained an extensive whale-fishery during the follow- 

 ing century, when this region became common ground for the whaling fleets 

 of various nationalities; and it had here also become almost exterminated 

 when the Bowhead or Greenland Right Whale became in turn the princi- 

 pal basis of this long continued industry. 



The first settlers in New England and the Middle States found this species 

 abundant on their arrival to these shores, and were not slow to avail them- 

 selves of so valuable an asset. During the middle of the seventeenth century 

 whaling was established at Cape Cod, at Martha's Vineyard, at Nantucket, 

 on Long Island, and in Delaware Bay, the whales being pursued at first in 

 boats from the shore, and later in small vessels in the open sea. By the mid- 

 dle of the eighteenth century it had become so reduced in numbers that its 

 pursuit was no longer profitable, and the whalers from these ports repaired 

 to distant seas, and other species became their prey. A small remnant, 

 however, remained, and a few are still captured nearly every year at different 

 points along the eastern coast of North America, as in the entrance to Davis 

 Strait, and from Cape Cod southward to the Carolinas, 2 and at much rarer 

 intervals near Iceland and in European waters. 



1 Cf. Clements R. Markham ' On the Whale Fishery of the Basque Provinces of Spain. ' 

 Proc. Zool. Soc, London, 1881, pp. 969-976; Nature, XXV, 1882, pp. 365-368, Feb. 16, 1882. 

 See previous reference to Markham under 'General History ' (antea, p. 280). 



2 A. Howard Clark, writing twenty years ago, stated that this species was "taken during 

 the summer months off the southern end of Greenland and to a limited extent in the lower part 

 of Davis Strait, near Resolution Island. Along the eastern coast of the United States they are 

 occasionally captured by shore whalemen, especially at the whaling stations of North Carolina. 

 During the winter months, whalers find them on the Hatteras Ground, in the Gulf of Mexico, 

 and the Caribbean Sea. At no particular place in the North Atlantic are they now abundant, 

 though they were formerly taken in great numbers close to the New England shore, and east- 

 ward of the Newfoundland fishing-banks" (Fisheries and Fishing Industries of the United States, 

 Sect. V. Vol. II, 1887, pp. 15-16). 



No authority is given for the statement that "whalers find them in the Gulf of Mexico, 



and the Caribbean Sea," and in the face of explicit statements that it is not found there, its 

 occurrence in these waters seems highly doubtful. Later in the same paper Mr. Clark himself 

 quotes from an article in the ' London Field' (I. c., p. 214) a passage from Alleyne S. Archer, 

 based on fourteen years' experience in the whale fishery at Barbadoes, stating that " Right whales 

 and sperm whales are never seen in these waters [Caribbean Sea], but the latter are often taken 

 amongst the Leeward Islands." 



