THIRD SERIES. 
Vou. IX.] MARCH, 1885. [No. 99. 
NOTES ON THE SEAL AND WHALE FISHERY OF 1884. 
By THomas Sourawzt., F.Z.S. 
THE season of 1884 must be considered as a very unfavourable 
one for the Newfoundland sealing. It is probable that a larger 
number of young seals escaped this season than usual, and that 
the smallness of the catch is to a considerable extent due to the 
fact that the old seals took to the ice high up in the neighbourhood 
of Funk Island, where the pack was very heavy, rendering it 
impossible for the ships to approach them: later in the season 
they came farther south, and some of the vessels made good 
catches; but the general result was very partial and unequal. 
I fear, however, that even in this favoured locality the symptoms 
of exhaustion, which cannot fail speedily to result, are already 
making themselves apparent. 
Of the twenty-one British vessels which left St. John’s Har- 
bour on March 10th, one missed the seals altogether, the 
remaining twenty ships killed 192,175 seals (against 286,000 
last season); of these the great bulk fell to six vessels (the 
‘Neptune,’ 41,000; ‘Aurora,’ 28,000; ‘Ranger,’ 24,000; ‘Falcon,’ 
21,000; ‘Hector,’ 19,000; and ‘Greenland,’ 16,000); all the 
remainder had to be counted with much smaller numbers, the 
‘Arctic’ only killing 100 seals. The average for the twenty 
vessels was 9608 each, against an average of about 14,000 for 
the season of 1883. If, however, we take the six Dundee vessels 
alone, and omit the ‘Aurora,’ which killed more thousands than 
any of the others did hundreds, and which therefore would render 
ZOOLOGIST.—MAaRCH, 1885. H 
