390 WHALES, SEALS, AND SEA-SERPENTS 



Greenland Whale. For a long time naturalists supposed 

 that this species was entirely extinct. In recent years, 

 however, it has been captured in considerable numbers 

 at several of the many whaling stations that have been 

 established on our own coasts and elsewhere around the 

 North Atlantic. It appears to be not infrequent in 

 Iceland, and lately many examples have been got at 

 the whaling station of Bunavenader in the Hebrides. 

 This whale has also been got in the Mediterranean, and 

 it is known from as far off as the Azores, Bermuda, 

 and Bear Island in the neighbourhood of Spitzbergen. 

 It is accordingly a great wanderer, and it may be that 

 its wanderings are greater still, for some naturalists 

 are inclined to doubt whether there be any real distinc- 

 tion between this species of the North Atlantic and the 

 so-called B. australis of the Southern Ocean. This 

 latter whale was the object of an immense American 

 fishery in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and 

 from 1804 to 1817 no less than 193,522 " southern 

 Right Whales " are said to have been taken by their 

 fleet. As in the North Atlantic, this great slaughter 

 was supposed to have led to its extermination, and 

 several Antarctic expeditions, including a small fleet 

 of Dundee whalers sent out in 1892, have failed to 

 rediscover it. But it has been suggested that the 

 reason for this failure is that the search has been 

 conducted in the neighbourhood of the ice, in places 

 where the Greenland Whale would be likely to occur ; 

 while, on the other hand, this southern whale was, if 

 not identical with, at least very closely akin to, the 

 Biscayan Whale, and lived remote from the ice in the 

 temperate regions of the ocean. In the northern half 

 of the Pacific Ocean there is another Right Whale, 

 the so-called B. japonica, hunted from time imme- 

 morial by the Japanese, and in late years also by the 



