14 ESCHRICHT AND REINHARDT 



3391 whales^ were caught, and the persecution was carried on with great success and very 

 extensively, until the profits, some twenty years ago, began to diminish, and the fishing trade 

 gradually to dwindle away, until it reached its present comparatively unimportant state. Not 

 less in Davis Strait and in Baffin's Bay than in the sea between Spitzbergen and Greenland has 

 the whale been pin-sued; and if we now ask what influence this violent war of extermina- 

 tion, continued dmring more than a century, has had upon it, the answer has already been 

 given above ; for we have seen that the whale, until this day, appears within precisely the 

 same limits in which it was found at the beginning of the persecution,^ but in numbers so 

 diminished that the fishing, at least in the ordinary method and with the vphahng-vessels 

 hitherto used, will hardly repay the trouble and expenses attending it.^ 



Finally, to close this sketch of the appearance of the whale along the western coast of 

 Greenland, by a short statement of the most essential results that may be derived from it, 

 we consider it to be proved, beyond doubt — (1) that the Greenland whale is a migratory 

 animal, penetrating furthest to the south in winter time, although it does not, even at that 

 season, leave that part of the sea which is filled with drift ice, and more or less closed by great 

 masses of ice ; and (2) that the numbers of the whales cannot but have been diminished along 

 the coast mentioned by the whaling expeditions, the original range of the whale, at the same time, 

 remaining perfectly unaltered. It must, however, be allowed, that the continued persecutions 

 have made the whale, naturally a timid animal, so shy that it will no longer allow the boats to 

 approach it, but that, as soon as it perceives them, it seeks a hiding-place beneath the floes or 

 the solid cover of ice. 



As regards the appearance of the whale in the remaining part of its extensive range no such 

 complete information can be obtained as that derived from Greenland. As we have already 

 mentioned, our information upon this subject can only be obtained from whalers and accounts 

 of polar expeditions. But fortunately the latter, if not so detailed as we might wish, are still 

 sufficient to show that the laws regulating the appearance of the whale in Baffin's Bay, along 

 the western coast of Greenland, are essentially the same as those that regulate its appearance 

 and movements in the remaining part of its native seas. 



Some exceptions, however, must be made. We have already seen that the whale instinc- 

 tively keeps close to the ice, whether it be the solid ice or great masses of drifting ice and 

 ice-floes, and that not even during the coldest time of winter does it aUow itself to 

 be driven from the waters filled with ice. It is therefore not to be expected that the 

 southward range of the whale should everywhere be limited by the same degree of latitude ; 

 we should rather be inclined to suppose that it would follow pretty nearly the undulating 



^ Leslie, Jameson, and Murray, ' Narrative of Discovery and Adventure in the Polar Seas and 

 Regions/ &c., third edit., Edinburgh, 1832, p. 419. 



^ Between the years 1849 and 1851 six whales were caught near Holsteinsborg ; during the 

 next three years none were caught, but again, in the years 1855 and 1856 three, and in 1858 four, were 

 killed. 



^ Recently, as is well known, the English have tried to employ screw-steamers for whaling, and 

 to unite this trade with that of seal-hunting. This year several such steamers have been fitted out ; it 

 must therefore be supposed that the earlier attempts have been remunerative. But the whale-fishiug 

 trade can hardly rise to any considerable height in BaiSn's Bay or the sea round Spitzbergen. 



