ON THE GREENLAND RIGHT-WHALE. 11 



only every other year. Now, if, from these considerations regarding the time of gestation and 

 bringing forth of the whales, we return to the question by which they were called forth, they 

 will seem to imply that the visits of the whale to the coast of Greenland and its fiords and bays 

 can scarcely be supposed to be made for the purpose of breeding ; for, on the one hand, this 

 would not explain why the whale appears at its southernmost stations, Sukkertoppen and Hol- 

 steinsborg, which it leaves before the time of breeding is over; and, on the other, it might be 

 expected, upon this supposition, that its stay would everywhere be of equal duration and 

 contemporaneous ; but such, we have seen, is not the case. Besides, in Greenland it has not 

 been observed that the number of females approaching the coast was out of proportion to that of 

 the males, which, as we saw before, was the case with the Cape and New Zealand right-whale. 

 There are, then, no sujQficient grounds to state that the wanderings of the Greenland whale in 

 Baffin's Bay, and especially along the coast of Greenland, take place for the purpose of breeding. 

 Nor do these migrations along the coast seem to be undertaken for the purpose of obtaining a 

 supply of food, for no observations have shown that the opossum shrimps {Mysis) and other small 

 crustaceans, which, with the limacines, form the nutriment of the whales, are found more 

 abundantly in the Greenland sea at one season than at another. On the other hand, it is not 

 difficult to point out a connection between the wanderings of the whale and the state of the 

 climate, or, more particularly, the motion and drift of the ice in Baffin's Bay ; for all observations 

 prove the Greenland whale to be closely and inseparably associated with the ice ; nor does it only, 

 while staying near the coast, prefer the water filled with drift ice, or roam along the icy masses 

 edging the coast, crowding in holes and openings of the ice, but its arrival at the coast is in the 

 most remarkable manner contemporaneous with the arrival of those huge masses of drifting ice 

 which, issuing from the northern and north-western part of Baffin's Bay, are known in Green 

 land by the name of the "west-ice." This is an opinion most frequently borne out by the 

 statements of those who have had an opportunity of observing the life of the whale, and the 

 correctness of which is most strikingly evinced by the examination of the journals kept in 

 the various factories for a considerable length of time, for in these the day is frequently men- 

 tioned on which the west-ice had arrived near the coast, or at least became visible from it, and 

 in almost all such cases it will be found that a few days after, if not quite contemporaneously 

 with the appearance of the ice, the first whales have been observed. It is, however, only 

 the smaUer part of the drifting ice in Baffin's Bay which is carried over to the coast of Green- 

 land; the chief masses, on the contrary, in drifting follow the opposite coast, and even that 

 part of the west-ice which really reaches Greenland is only scattered along part of the coast of 

 this country. But in this respect we shall also find a remarkable correspondence between 

 the range of the west-ice and that of the whale. For it is principally near the outlet of 

 Disco Bay and the districts belonging to the factory of Egedesminde that the west-ice 

 comes nearest to the coast, and from that place it is scattered downwards to Holsteinsborg 

 and Sukkertoppen, 



Further southward the sea is almost free from ice along the coast, even when the winter is 

 far advanced. For the " storiis" (large ice), as it is called, which in February or March comes 



twelve montlis, but he does not prove that it is the same individuals which are annually seen with 

 cubs ; and about the time of sexual intercourse he gives us no information. (Vide ' Narrative of a 

 Whaling Voyage round the Globe,' London, 1840, vol. ii, p. 230.) 



