1 I PYGMY SPERM WHALE PIERS. 



Bay is in the same latitude as southern Nova Scotia. In August 

 1761. one was killed in lat. 45° 54', long. 53° 57', which is off 

 the southern Newfoundland coast and 275 miles due east of 

 Scaterie, Cape Breton; and in 1766 another was seen near 

 George's Bank, which is to the south of Nova Scotia and a 

 little beyond its limits.* These are merely recorded occur- 

 rences, but of course there are many others which did not 

 happen to be noted. The most northern grounds which they reg- 

 ularly frequented some thirty-five years ago, were off Cape 

 Hatteras. Glover M. Allen, in a recent letter to me, writes 

 that "the Sperm Whale (P. macrocephalus) must occasionally 

 reach Nova Scotian waters, although 1 do not recall at this 

 moment a definite record. It is taken once in a while off the 

 Newfoundland coast at the whaling stations." The manager 

 of a Newfoundland whaling station told Prof. E. E. Prince 

 that their whaling vessels had twice taken Sperm Whales off 

 the Cape Breton coast and towards Newfoundland. 



While this paper is in type, I find a thrilling account of the 

 capture of thirty Sperm Whales in the harbor of Keels (lat. 

 48° 32') in Bonavista Bay, almost eighty miles north-northwest 

 of St. John's, Newfoundland, in the early part of August, 1922. 

 The account, by Thomas Kelly, appeared in the "Canadian 

 Fishermen," Gardenville, P.Q , Oct. 1922, vol. 9, p. 221, and it 

 describes a remarkable instance of daring among the Newfound- 

 land fishermen. A motor-boat from Keels, when a few miles off 

 land, encountered about seventy large whales, which the fisher- 

 men mistook for Blackfish or "Pot-heads" (G. melas) and which 

 they accord ngly undertook to drive to the shore. Some seven 

 motorboats took part in this operation, three boats on either 

 side, and one behind making much noise with its exhaust. The 

 large animals went shorewards like a flock of sheep, and made 

 no commotion even when a boat happened to run upon one of 

 their backs. 



When, however, the whales found that they were entrapped 

 in the cliff-surrounded harbour of Keels, they began to fight 

 terrifically, and the men, in some twenty or thirty boats, com- 

 menced to kill them. Hatchets, axes, knives, and guns were 

 used in efforts to subdue the monsters. Forty-eight bullets are 

 said to have been fired into the head of one of them. Men were 

 to be seen on the backs of the animals, chopping with axes. No 



♦G. B. Goode, loo. oit.. page 8. 



