82 B. BROWN ON THE CETACEA OF GREENLAND. 



(e) Economic value. — After the very excellent account of 

 Scoresby, it would be mere pleonasm on my part to say one word 

 regarding the commercial importance of the Whale. The intro- 

 duction of steam, the almost universal use of the gun-harpoon, and 

 the discoveries of Ross and Parry on the western shores of Davis 

 Strait have greatly altered the natm'e of the *' Strait fishery " 

 since Scoresby's time. For this reason I have given the outline 

 of a whaler's summer cruise, more especially as it illustrates, 

 according to my observation, the range and migrations of the 

 Right Whale.* 



(^) Varieties q/'Balsena mysticetus. — The whalers do not recog- 

 nize any varieties of the Right Whale by specific names, nor 

 do I of my own knowledge know of any entitled to that rank. 

 Professors Eschricht and Reinhardt| consider that there is a second 

 species of Right Whale found in the Greenland and northern seas, 

 the "Nordcaper" (^Balcena noi^dcaper, Bonnat.; Balcena islandica^ 

 Briss., &c.), the " Sletbag " of the Icelanders, and that the following 

 facts have been ascertained regarding it : — 1st, that it is much 

 more active than the Greenland Whale, much quicker and more 

 violent in its movements, and accordingly both more difficult and 

 dangerous to capture ; 2nd, that it is smaller (it being, however, 

 impossible to give an exact statement of its length) and has much 

 less blubber ; 3rd, that its head is shorter, and that its whalebone is 

 comparatively small and scarcely more than half the length of that of 

 the B, mysticetus ; 4th, that it is regularly infested with a Cirriped 

 belonging to the genus Coronula ; andj (5th) that it belongs to 

 the Temperate North Atlantic as exclusively as the B. mysticetus 

 belongs to the icy sea, so that it must be considered exceptional 

 when either of them strays into the range of the other. Moreover 

 they consider that in its native seas it is to be found further 

 towards the south in the winter (viz. in the Bay of Biscay, and 

 near the coast of North America down to Cape Cod), while in the 

 summer it roves about in the sea around Iceland and between this 

 island and the most northerly part of Norway. Dr. Eschricht 

 considers that this was the Whale captured by the Basque 

 whalers in the seventeenth century ; hence he has called it Balcena 

 biscayensis. A considerable portion of this description corre- 

 sponds with what I have said regarding the Spitzbergen Whales 

 as a race. I have heard that " barnacles " have been got on 

 Whales ; but these were looked upon as a sign of age in the Whale. 



It is now a question to what species the Right Whales now and 

 then stranded on the European coasts are to be referred. What the 

 " Scrag Whale " of Dudley J {Balcena gibbosa, Erxl.) is I cannot 



* For an elaborate analysis of the German Arctic whale-fishery see Linde- 

 mann in the Appendix to Petermann's " Geograph. Mittheil.", 1867 ; and 

 for that by the Dundee fleet see Yeatman, Rep. Brit. Assoc, 1867. I have 

 given a fuller outline of a Baffin's Bay Whaler's Cruise in " Ocean Highways," 

 1871. A still better account will be found in Capt. A. H. Markham's 

 " Whalmg Cruise," 1872. 



f Loc. cit. 



X Phil. Trans, vol. xxxiii., p. 259. 



