WHALE CHARTS. HI 



whale conducted upon a scientific plan is about 1690, when it 

 was commenced by the American colonists. In 1775, ships were 

 first sent out from ports of Great Britain, but for some years it 

 was necessary to appoint an American commander and har- 

 pooner until competent officers could be reared. At the same 

 early date the sperm fishery was chiefly prosecuted in the 

 Atlantic, but Messrs. Enderby's ship " Emilia " having rounded 

 Cape Horn in 1788, first carried the sperm whale fishery into 

 the Pacific, where its success opened a wide and fruitful field 

 for future exertions. As our whalers became better acquainted 

 with the South Sea, many valuable resorts were discovered. In 

 1819 the "Syren" (British) first carried on the fishery in the 

 western parts of that great ocean, and in the year 1848 the 

 American whaler "Superior," Captain Roys, penetrated through 

 Behring's Straits into the Icy Sea, and opened the fishery in 

 those remote waters. The year after no less than 154 vessels 

 followed upon his track, and the number has been increasing 

 ever since. At present the Americans are the people which 

 carries on the whale fishery with the greatest energy and good 

 fortune. While of late years only thirty or forty British sail 

 have been employed in the Pacific, our cousins "across the 

 Atlantic" numbered in the year 1841 no less than 650 whalers, 

 manned by 13,500 seamen. One of the causes of their success 

 may be, that while the whale fishery in England is carried on 

 by men of large capital, who are the sole proprietors of the ship, 

 the American interest in one vessel is held by many men of 

 small capital, and not unfrequently by the commander and 

 officers. It must, however, not be forgotten that the Australian 

 colonies, being more conveniently situated than the mother 

 country, fit out many ships for the whale fishery, which is 

 besides conducted in several permanent stations along the coasts 

 of New Zealand, &c. 



Whale charts have of late years been drawn, on which the 

 best fishing grounds at different seasons are delineated. ' These 

 maps are not only useful guides for the fishermen, but promise 

 the future solution of the still undecided question of the migra- 

 tion of whales. While some naturalists are of opinion that the 

 cetaceans, flying from the pursuit of man, abandon their old 

 haunts for more sequestered regions, others, like M. Jacquinot 

 {Zoologie, Voyage de I'Astrolabe et de la Zelee) believe that if 



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