ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN. 



441 



cumulating and the time will come when his 

 drafts will no longer be honored. It matters 

 not whether the vessel is a bucket or an ocean, 

 one can only take out as much water as it con- 

 tains and where all is outgo and no income, it 

 is merely a question of time when one or the 

 other will be emptied. 



The history of the Newfoundland whale fish- 

 ery merely repeats what has taken place every- 

 where the whale has been hunted, the only dif- 

 ference being that owing to the limited area 

 covered and the use of modern appliances re- 

 sults have been reached more quickly than in 

 the days of sailing vessels and hand harpoons. 



It is a matter of record how the Right whale 

 was successively swept from the Atlantic coasts 

 of Europe and North America, then from the 

 North Pacific and finally from the Southern 

 Seas, and what has happened in the case of this 

 species will happen in the case of others. J The 

 great Bowhead, owing to its restriction to a 

 portion of the Arctic seas, and the ease with 

 which it may be taken, is in a worse plight 

 than his smaller relative and it is quite possible 

 that the present generation will see its actual 

 extermination^ And yet this monster once flour- 

 ished in such numbers that for nearly three cen- 

 turies its capture gave employment to hundreds 

 of vessels and thousands of men. How abun- 

 dant this species actually was we can only sur- 

 mise from the former size of the whaling fleet 

 and the statistics of its catch, though the old- 

 time wood cuts showing the chase of the whale 

 seem not to exaggerate its abundance. The 

 American whaling fleet at the time of its great- 

 est activity numbered from 500 to more than 

 600 sail, while in England, our most active com- 

 petitor, from 25 to 60 vessels cleared from the 

 port of Hull alone and several other towns con- 

 tributed to swell the Arctic fleet which com- 

 prised from 150 to 250 vessels. 



JThe writer is quite aware that this species still 

 survives and, owing to the cessation of whaling for 

 some years, has even increased in some localities. 

 This increase is now being taken and in a year or two 

 the species will again be at a low ebb. 



§The possible extermination of the Right and Bow- 

 head whales was foreseen as early as 1850, and com- 

 ments made on the large number of whales lost by 

 sinking and on the evil results of killing the Right 

 whale on its breeding grounds. 



The imports of whalebone into the United 

 States from 1805 to 1905 were 81,985,655 

 pounds. Averaging 2,000 pounds per whale, a 

 rather high estimate, this would represent no 

 less than 40,804 Right and Bowhead whales 

 taken by American whalers. 



Taking the port of Hull, England, we know 

 partly by the actual returns and partly by esti- 

 mates based on the yield of oil, that the ships 

 of this port between 1722 and 1820, took in 

 Davis Strait and on the East Ccast of Green- 

 land, no less than 10,207 whales and a fair esti- 

 mate of the total English catch would be about 

 20,000 Right and Bowhead whales, so that in 

 two centuries not less than 50,000 were killed 

 by English and American whalers alone. 



But this is only a portion of the catch taken 

 in the north, for as early as 1 660 the Dutch sent 

 500 ships to the Spitzbergen fishery alone, and 

 by the end of the century the number had risen 

 to 2,000. Even though many of these were so 

 small that now-a-days they would be looked 

 upon as mere boats, the total catch prior to 1750 

 must have mounted into the thousands." 



The contrast of these figures and the returns 

 for the past two years show to what a low ebb 

 the whales of this part of the world have been 

 reduced, for in 1906 the catch of the Dundee 

 fleet was but seven, and in 1907 only three 

 whales were taken, one of these even being a 

 yearling. 



The catch of the San Francisco fleet was 

 20 in 1906, and 82 in 1907, but the success of 

 the past year is the direct outcome of failure the 

 year before, and the number of Bowheads taken 

 this year will undoubtedly be small. 



Nothing can possibly prevent the extermina- 

 tion of the Bowhead but the discovery of some 

 perfect substitute for whalebone, and there seems 

 not the slightest probability that this will be 

 done, so that this huge creature will be one of 

 the many victims immolated on the altar of 

 fashion. Meanwhile it is worth noting that 

 there is not a specimen of this whale in the 

 United States and very few in the world and 



^According to Wieland the number of Bowheads 

 taken by the Dutch between 1669 and 1758 was 

 57,590. 



