2 EDWARD A. WILSON. 
the Southern ice. And lastly, Mr. Bruce and Dr. Donald, who accompanied the 
‘Dundee Whalers’ in 1892, have only to report its total absence. 
There has always been much discussion upon the report made by Sir James Ross 
in 1840, that “Right Whales” were exceedingly abundant in the waters of Ross 
Sea. Butalthough his report has been fully tested, and much criticism applied to it by 
various explorers, and although whaling captains have hunted the area in question 
unsuccessfully, it would nevertheless be wrong to dismiss the report as having been 
founded upon error, when we consider that it was made by persons who had had more 
practical opportunities of becoming familiar with the Right Whale than have the 
majority of naturalists of the present day. 
By the “Right Whale” in his report, Sir James Ross certainly meant the 
Balena australis, a whale which runs as a rule in pairs or singly, and is upwards of 
50 to 70 feet in length. Its spout is double, one jet passing to each side upwards 
and forwards, but neither as high as the spout of the Rorqual. It is said to frequent 
the seas of the South, where it can find discoloured water of shallow depth. There it 
has been hunted almost to extermination by a method, the employment of which affords 
a very sufficient explanation, as it seems to me, of its disappearance. One has but 
to refer to any account of the South Sea Right Whale fishing industry to learn how 
first an active look-out was kept upon the bays where this whale was wont to come 
to calve, and how, secondly, the hunt began with the destruction of the calf, not 
because it was of value in itself, but because it was known that the mother would 
then become an easy prey, as she would not leave the bay without her suckling. 
This is, perhaps, the most complete and rapid method of exterminating an animal 
that has ever been adopted, and in the case of the Southern Right Whale it seems to 
have been only too successful. 
In the library of the Royal Geographical Society is to be found a short manuscript 
note by ‘‘ Whalebone,” one of those, I believe, who accompanied the ‘ Dundee Whalers,’ 
and in it are given a series of rough sketches which indicate methods of identifying 
the various whales of the Antarctic seas at a distance. In this note it is evident that 
“Whalebone” was convinced that Ross had mistaken a Rorqual, or a Finner 
Whale for a Right Whale, and his conclusions appear to be based upon an observation, 
which we were able to confirm, namely, that the Rorqual shows its fin only some 
few seconds after finishing its blow. This is a point to which I shall again refer 
below. The Right Whale, in this manuscript by ‘“‘ Whalebone,” is depicted, as usual, 
with no fin at all, with a double “spout,” and a note to the effect that it blows 
at regular intervals. Sir James Ross may, of course, have been mistaken, but he 
based his report apparently less on his own experience than on that of some of his crew 
who had been engaged in whaling cruises, and as this particular whale was at one time 
abundant in the Southern oceans, breeding freely off the coasts of South Africa, New 
Zealand, and Australia, there would seem to be no primd facie reason to doubt that at 
certain seasons of the year it made its way to the Southern ice, as the similar Northern 
