$th April, 1887. 



W. H. Patterson, Esq., M.R.I.A., in the Chair. 



R. Lloyd Patterson, Esq., J.P., F.L.S., read a Paper 



entitled, 



SOME ACCOUNT OF THE WHALE AND SEAL 



FISHERIES, PAST AND PRESENT. 



The reader commenced by giving a brief historical sketch of 

 the whale-fishing industry, which he said had been discovered 

 or invented by the inhabitants of the Basque Provinces of Spain, 

 in the Bay of Biscay, as early as the 12th century. A whale 

 still figures in the coats of arms of some of the Basque towns ; 

 and, long after that portion of the whale fishery which had 

 been prosecuted with much success by the Basques had ceased 

 to exist, the English and Dutch whale-fishers continued to. 

 employ Basques as harpooners or " whale-strikers," as they are 

 called in the still extant accounts of Baffin's celebrated voyage, 

 when twenty-four of these men accompanied the expedition in 

 that capacity. After describing at some length the pursuit and 

 capture of the pilot whale (Globicephalus me/as) at the Faroe 

 Islands, where several hundred of these comparatively small 

 cetaceans are sometimes taken at a single drive, the lecturer 

 alluded to the flourishing state of the Newfoundland whale 

 fisheries up to and about the years 1785 and 1786, when Govern- 

 ment paid a bounty of 40s. per ton to each vessel of two 

 hundred tons or upwards engaged in it, and when the number 

 of vessels amounted to between two and three hundred. The 

 trade continued highly prosperous for many years, but from 

 1840 or thereabouts it declined, owing to the diminishing 

 numbers of the whales and the lower value of the oil, and lost 

 or worn-out vessels were not replaced. The trade languished 



