48 ESCHRICIIT AND REINHARDT 



narrative. Judging by his former occupation, we sliould think that Buscli might be perfectly able 

 to recognise the European origin of the harpoon, and by the account of the Roman letters he may, 

 perhaps, have only meant to say that he had found on it one of the common marks which 

 the European whalers regularly use to stamp their harpoons. 



But interesting as these cases are, they cannot be made to prove anything but that whales 

 hunted by Avhalers near Spitzbergen may be found roving through Behring's Straits as far south- 

 wards as the coasts of Korea and Japan. That the Greenland whale regularly repairs to these 

 regions is not proved by them; and as the whalers, to judge by the whalebone which they bring 

 home from the fishing grounds round Japan, do not in our days meet with any other whale 

 there, but one of the species comprehended by the collective appellation of Balæna aastralis, we 

 are inclined to suppose that, at least in those cases where these whales Avounded by European 

 harpoons have been found as far towards south as near the coasts of Japan and Korea, they 

 have only accidentally strayed to these places. It is a different question whether the Green- 

 land whale is a regular visitor farther northwards in Behring's Straits and in the sea round 

 Kamtschatka, and many circumstances seem in a certain measure favorable to such a supposition. 

 Eor when the South Sea whalers, in the beginning of the year 1840, or about that time, began to 

 extend their expeditions to these northern regions, they found a species of whale different from 

 the common South Sea right-whale, and which they called " Bowheads," on account of their much 

 larger heads and much greater curve of their upper jaws. Even in this short description of these 

 Bowheads we recognise without difficulty those features by which the Greenland whale is dis- 

 tinguished, and then- resemblance with the latter is rendered still more certain by the appearance 

 of the whalebone, commonly sold by the name of Okhotsk or Polar whalebone, which comes to us 

 from those very regions in which the Bowheads are caught, and which we have not been able 

 to distinguish from genu.ine Greenland whalebone by any certain character. We can, therefore, 

 hardly doubt but that in the sea near Kamtschatka a whale exists which, to judge by the 

 shape of its head and the quality of its whalebone, must at least belong to the same group as the 

 Greenland whale ; but wdiether it is exactly of the same species can hardly be ascertained as 

 long as sm.all quantities of its whalebone are the only parts of it that have come to Europe. 

 We have already mentioned that Zorgdrager believed that among the whales appearing near 

 Spitzbergen, two species were distinguishable, a West-ice fish and a South-ice fish, and we have 

 hardly at present a right to reject the possibility of the Greenland whale being a collective 

 species like the South Sea whale, and that the Bowheads of the American and English whalers, in 

 that case, might be identical with the South-ice fish of the old Dutchmen. But however that 

 may be, Avhether the Bowheads may in time be proved to be genuine Greenland whales, or to 

 constitute a different species, at all events we are already in a position to assert that our 

 statements about the geographical distribution of the two groups of right-whales are not 

 incorrect. The sea on both sides of Kamtschatka seems to be the southermost limits of the range 

 of these Bowheads which we have mentioned so often. Mr. Sodring, the captain of a Danish 

 whaler, Avho, on his third voyage to the Pacific in the " Neptun," caught two such in the Behring 

 Sea, just off Petropavlovsk, has been kind enough to inform us that it was not till he arrived in 

 this place that he found them, and that in the someAvhat more southerly fishing place, AA'here 

 he had been fishing before, he had only seen the common South Sea right-Avhales. The two 

 specimens Avhich Mr. Sodring succeeded in obtaining Avere caught in the months of June and 

 July; there Avas no ice at the time AA'here he Avas beating betAA-een Petropavlovsk, Behring's 



