1/4 DELIBERATE DESTRUCTION OF ANIMAL LIFE 



estimated to have fallen to less than 500 strong. So 

 threatening did .the outlook for the unprotected Grey Seal 

 seem to be that in 1914 a Parliamentary Bill became law, 

 making it illegal to destroy the Grey Seal between October r 

 and December 15, a period covering the breeding time of 

 the species, under penalty for every offence of ^5 for the 

 slayer and 10 for the owner of the boat employed. 



WHALES 



Five hundred years ago, Whales were abundant in every 

 ocean. Even the Mediterranean Sea furnished a regular 

 fishery which has long since died out for lack of Whales to 

 slay. And although the actual hunting of the larger and 

 more valuable species, the Greenland or Right Whale 

 (Bal&na mysticetus] and the Sperm Whale {Physeter macro- 

 cephalus], was never carried on systematically in the 

 immediate neighbourhood of the Scottish coasts, the Scottish 

 fauna is the poorer for the destruction that was visited upon 

 these wanderers of the ocean in distant parts. 



In this destruction Scottish vessels and Scottish mariners 

 played their part. At Peterhead the whale fishery was 

 started in 1788 and in less than a hundred years, to 1879, 

 had accounted for the capture of 4 195^ Whales yielding 

 30,975 tons of oil (a ton measuring 252 gallons) and 1549 

 tons of whalebone, apart from a total of 1,673,052 Seals, 

 yielding another 20,913 tons of oil. At Dundee the fishery 

 commenced in 1790, and up to 1879 there were captured 

 4220 Whales, yielding 32,774 tons of oil, and 1640 tons of 

 whalebone, together with 917,278 Seals, yielding 10,464 tons 

 of oil. 



And this is no more than a drop in the bucket. In the 

 thirty-eight years from 1835 to 1872, the American whaling 

 fleet is credited with having captured or destroyed 292,714 

 Whales. The story of trie more valuable W'hales can be read 

 with no uncertainty in the statistics of the whaling industry: 

 a gradually decreasing catch and following upon this a 

 reduction in the numbers of ships that set out for the 

 whaling grounds, so that the United States fleet, which 

 numbered some 730 vessels in 1846, had fallen off to 218 in 

 1872 such facts tell of the pitiful decline of the great ocean 

 wanderers. 



