ON THE GREENLAND RIGHT- WHALE. 31 



belonged to the highest north, that came to the coasts of their island from the north, and 

 returned again from them to the north. 



But as the Greenland whale cannot be supposed ever to have strayed down into the more 

 temperate waters of the Northern Atlantic, it remains to consider the question, what whale it 

 can have been which through centuries has been pursued as eagerly in this sea, as the former in 

 the Arctic Sea. The question will not be difficult to answer. It was the "Sarde" of the 

 Basques, the "Nordkaper" of the old Dutch and North- Germ an whalers, and most probably 

 the same species as the right-whale, already mentioned, of the Anglo-Americans, from the coasts 

 of Nantucket and New England. Such a " Sarde " or " Nordkaper " has at all times, by whalers 

 of all the different nations, been distinguished from the Greenland whale ; they knew very well 

 that it was to be found in quite different parts of the sea from the latter ; and the various 

 accounts of it, however deficient they may be in other respects, agree in what is most essential, 

 and leave no doubt of its being an animal quite different from the North whale. Finally, it had 

 its place in the zoological system, until it was thrown out of it by the criticism of Cuvier,^ 

 which in this instance was too severe. It had, indeed, been introduced into the system by 

 Klein, under the very ill-chosen and perplexing name of Balæna glacialis, which might much 

 rather have been given to the Greenland whale, and when introduced nobody had as yet clearly 

 pointed out the difference between its range and that of the latter. 



We do not know whether any Basque books, or manuscripts, of the early middle ages have 

 come down to us which contain such statements relating to this whale as to enable us to form 

 an idea about it. But in the same old Icelandic composition, that contained the earliest de- 

 scription of the North whale, we find it mentioned in the following words : 



" Videre kaldes endnu een Hvale-Art Sletbage ; og er ingen Einde paa dens Ryg ; den er 

 næsten saa stor af Væxt, som hine, hvilke vi sidst talede om. Men de Folk, som fare paa 

 Soen, frygte den meget, thi dens Natur er at spoge meget med Skibe." 



(Further, another species of whale is called " Sletbag " [a whale without back fin], and no 

 fin is on its back ; it is almost as big in body as those last mentioned by us [namely, " Bardhvale" 

 or Cachalots, whose length is put down at thirty or forty ells], " but those who travel on the sea 

 fear it much, for its nature is to play much with vessels."^) 



What here is stated about this " Sletbag " is certainly very little ; but the want of back fin 

 renders it at any rate probable that it is a right- whale which is introduced by this name, and 

 not only the great difference in size, but also the difference in temper and natural disposition, 

 prove that it was difierent from the Greenland whale ; the latter being expressly described as 

 peaceable, while, on the contrary, the " Sletbag " was much feared. It must, however, be ad- 

 mitted that, if only confined to the statement of the ' Mirror/ we should find it rather doubt- 

 ful what animal was meant by this " Sletbag," but all uncertainty is removed when we compare 

 with the above description the statements found in a list of Icelandic whales written in the 

 seventeenth century, and sent by an Icelandic clergyman to Ole Worm, and which Th. Bartholin 

 has printed in his fourth Centuria.^ It is true that this list is essentially a sort of im- 



^ Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles. 4me Ed. T. VIII, p. 256. Annales des Sc. natur. T. II 

 p. 27 : Sur la determination des diverses especes de baleiues vivantes. Par M. Cuvier. 

 ^ Kongespeil, Einersen's translation, p. 128. 

 ^ Th. Bartholini histor. anatom, rar. Centuria IV, p. 272 — 289. 



