GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION AND DESCENT. 



17 



has been driven back by the ceaseless pursuit 

 to which it has been* exposed since the middle 

 ages to the remotest parts of the Polar seas. 

 The chase is in itself not very dangerous. 

 It sometimes, though rarely, happens that one 

 of these whales capsizes a boat with a stroke 

 of its tail, or carries the boat down with it in 

 diving when the sailors have not succeeded 

 in cutting at the right moment the rope to 

 which the harpoon is attached. The dangers 

 which threaten whalers are those to which 

 all navigators in the icy regions round the 

 poles are exposed, and every year a certain 

 number of ships are lost through being caught 

 and crushed in the ice. In spite of these 

 dangers the pursuit is actively carried on in 

 both the Polar seas for the sake of the train- 

 oil and the whalebone. A Greenland whale 

 60 feet in length yields 24 tons of oil, and 

 about 32 cwt. of whalebone. 



While the Greenland whale formerly 

 advanced as far as the Bay of Biscay it now 

 seldom crosses the 65 th parallel of north 

 latitude. The southern whale till about fifteen 

 years ago used to come pretty regularly as 

 far north as the Gulf of Mexico; but now, 

 probably in consequence of the pursuit carried 

 on uninterruptedly in the Pacific Ocean (the 

 Sandwich Islands forming the headquarters 

 of this business), the fisheries already men- 

 tioned as carried on in the channel between 

 the island of Trinidad and the mainland of 

 South America have come to an end. Perhaps 

 these whales have also been scared away by 

 the increasing steamship traffic. The Green- 

 land whale also speeds away on hearing any 

 noise. The utmost possible quietness is an 

 essential condition of a successful chase. 



[Some peculiarities in the mode of whale-fishing 

 in the Antarctic Ocean at Kerguelen's Land are 

 mentioned by Moseley in his Notes of a Naturalist 

 on the Challenger (chap, viii.) :— " A difficulty would 

 arise from a whale when struck running through 

 the thick beds of kelp {Macrocystis) which every- 

 where form tangled barriers at a certain distance 

 from shore. This is got over by having large very 



Vol. 11. 



sharp knives ready, which are held close beside the 

 line as the boat scuds through the water, dragged 

 by the whale, and cut a clear passage in the weed. 



" The whales are killed by means of a bomb, a 

 cylindrical iron tube full of powder provided with 

 a fuse and pointed at one end ; at the other, pro- 

 vided with feathers like an arrow. The whole is 

 not unlike a large cross-bow bolt. The feathers 

 are made of vulcanized india-rubber, and when the 

 bolt is rammed into the gun from which it is fired 

 are wrapped round the end of the shaft. As soon 

 as the bolt leaves the muzzle they expand, and 

 prevent the bombs wobbling or capsizing. 



"The invention is extremely ingenious. The 

 bomb is fired from a heavy gun from the shoulder, 

 and is good up to about fifteen paces. It is fired 

 into the whale just behind the flipper. 



" It goes in, and after a while makes a loud 

 explosion, often killing the beast almost at once. 

 Four kinds of whales are common about Kerguelen's 

 Island, but only one, the southern whalebone 

 whale, is regularly hunted. . . . Similar bombs 

 are now regularly used in the North."] 



GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION AND DESCENT 

 OF THE WHALES AND DOLPHINS. 



It is difficult, if not impossible, to say any- 

 thing definite regarding the geographical dis- 

 tribution of the whales. The facility with 

 which these animals traverse enormous ex- 

 panses of the ocean, and the readiness with 

 which they undertake distant migrations, the 

 difficulty in procuring the necessary material 

 for the distinction of species and genera, the 

 rarity of many types which inhabit the high 

 seas, the numerous accidents by which these 

 animals get carried away out of their usual 

 domain and stranded on shores without one 

 being able to learn whence they have come, 

 and lastly, the persecutions of man, which 

 have driven them away from their original 

 homes, all these circumstances combine to 

 hinder us from arriving at definite conclu- 

 sions on this subject. 



The two great groups of the toothed 



whales and whalebone whales are distributed 



over all seas, and if the latter are found 



35 



