ORDER OP CETACEA. 47 



straits of Lancaster, and even as far as Melville Bay. If it be 

 true that there exists round the North Pole a sea free of ice during 

 the summer season, as the hardy pioneers who are starting at this 

 very moment to discover this Arctic Sea assert, it is probable that 

 very numerous Whales will be found which have taken refuge in 

 those latitudes as yet unknown to man. 



It is not only towards the arctic seas that the whalers have 

 pushed their courageous expeditions. The antarctic regions have 

 been equally explored. At the beginning of the eighteenth 

 century, whalers from Massachvisets (America) began to take the 

 direction of the South Pole. They sailed along by Cape Verd, 

 the south-west coast of Africa, Brazil, and Paraguay, to the Falk- 

 land Isles. Since then the English have also gone whaling in the 

 south, and the ships of these two nations have ploughed up, not 

 only the southern parts of the Atlantic Ocean, but the whole 

 extent of the Great Ocean. The Americans have now more than 

 300 whaling ships, all of which bring in large profits. Some, but 

 a very few, French ships, have explored the same latitudes. 



The west coast of Africa, the Bay of Lagos, the mouth of La 

 Plata, the coasts of Patagonia, New Holland, Tasmania, New 

 Zealand, and the Sandwich Islands are the principal regions 

 frequented by the whalers of the two worlds. As for the ancient 

 hunting-grounds, we have already said that they are unstocked. 

 The appearance of a Whale in the Gulf of Gascony is now an 

 unheard-of event.* The coast of Greenland, which was an excellent 

 station, is now deserted. Baffin's Bay has been exhausted by the 

 English ; and Davis's Straits, which was visited at the beginning 

 of our century by more than a hundred whaling ships, belonging to 

 different nations, counts only six or seven, which are not even sure 

 of bringing home cargoes. 



We must not omit to mention here a remark made by M. Paul 

 Gervais. This naturalist is disposed to think that the Whales 

 which were formerly pursued so near to our shores (the French 

 shores), were rather Rorquals than Right Whales. The chro- 

 niclers of the middle ages, who are defective in their descriptions 

 of that precision which is so desirable, may even have con- 

 founded under the name of Whales, other large Cetaceans which 



* Rorquals of at leiist three species are still occaBionally cast ashore on the French 

 and British coasts. — Ed. 



