18 ESCHRICHT AND REINHARDT 



of St. Lawrence, and along the shores of Newfoundland and Acadia, in the midst of summer, 

 is the same species as the Greenland Avhale. We have seen that the latter, in Davis Strait, 

 leaves winter stations even much more northerly before this season, in order to go still farther 

 northwards ; and it would be quite contrary to all that we know about its nature and manner of 

 livino- if it reoularly and constantly stayed in latitudes so southerly, at a season when the tem- 

 perature both of the air and of the sea is much higher than that in which it is accustomed to 

 live. Under these circumstances, it is the more important to collect every possible information 

 about the appearance of the Newfoundland whale, in order to see if it really was the same 

 as the Greenland whale. Unfortunately this information is scanty, especially as the old reports 

 from the sixteenth century are quite silent in this respect ; but in the description of the Avhales 

 appearing along the coast of New England, published by Paid Dudley (perhaps the same who in 

 Charlevoix's time was Governor- General of New England) in the 33rd vol. of the ' Philosophical 

 Transactions,'^ in a letter to the editor, we have a sketch of the " right- or whalebone-whale," in 

 which it is described as a whale sixty or seventy feet long, without back fin, whose new-born cubs 

 have a leno-th of about twenty feet. The whale, when one year old, is called " shorthead ; '' 

 when two years old, it is called " stunt," and afterwards "scuUfish" ; and the age of the latter, 

 Dudley adds, can no longer be pointed out exactly, but can only be guessed at from the 

 leno-th of the whalebone, n-Mch %nll sometimes attain a lengtti of six or seven feet. This important 

 information about the length of the whalebone is confirmed by a similar but quite independent 

 statement of later date. In a description of the Isles of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, 

 by a Pennsylvania farmer, Mr. Hector St. John," a short list of all the whales known to the 

 Nantucket whalers is given, and in this is also enumerated "the right-whale," or, as it is 

 also called " the seven-feet-bone," which is described as a whale sixty feet long, with whalebone 

 seven feet long, and is said to be found frequently near the coast of the island. Now, the whale- 

 bone of this whale seems not only to have been much shorter than that of the Greenland whale, 

 but also to be different in other respects ; for it is stated by another author that the whalebone 

 of those whales which, at the end of the last century, were caught near the coast of North 

 America, was considered to be much inferior to that of the Greenland whale, as it was brittle 

 and fragile^ when compared with the latter. 



Thus, we have, in the part of the sea under consideration, a species of whale, a right-whale 

 indeed, but a right-whale* with whalebone comparatively short, from which it derived its 

 name of " seven-feet-bone" ^ and thus totally different from the Greenland whale ; and if further 

 proofs should be required of the existence of such a right-whale with short whalebone, in the 



^ "An Essay upon the Natural History of Whales," in ' Philosophical Transactions,' vol. xxxiii 

 (1724, 1725), No. 387, p. 256. 



" ' Letters from an American Farmer,' 8vo, London, 1782, p. 169. 



^ Anderson, A., ' An Historical and Chronological Deduction of the Origin of Commerce,' &c., 

 A.D. 1771. The quotations are second-hand from Scoreshy, as \?e have not been able to examine 

 the last two editions of this work, but only the first, which stops at the year 1763. 



* It is well known to the authors that attempts were also made to catch humpbacks [Megaptera) 

 near the Bermuda Islands, in the seventeenth century (see ' Philosophical Transactions,' vol. i, 1665, 

 1666, No. 1, p. 132). But the usual fishing was for right-whales. 



^ Hector St. John, ' Letters from an American Farmer/ p. 169. 



