NOTES ON ARCTIC WHALING VOYAGE OF 1905. 43 



on the coast, rendering the fall fishery impossible ; but the season 

 has been a very fair one, resulting in 23 Whales, 37 White Whales, 

 122 Walruses, 408 Seals, 200 Bears, 471 Foxes, 290 tuns of oil, 

 and 393 cwt. of bone. The price of oil is £19 per tun, and the 

 last sale of bone realized £2250 per ton. The total value of the 

 season's produce may be roughly estimated at £48,000. 



I am, as usual, greatly indebted to Mr. Eobert Kinnes, of 

 Dundee, for his kind assistance ; and to Mr. J. Mitchell's annual 

 circular for details of the produce. 



As the present may be the last opportunity which will present 

 itself, may I be allowed to add a few brief statistics illustrating 

 the decay of this vanishing industry in the past century ? 



No history of the British Whale fishery has ever been written 

 comparable with that from the United States of America, com- 

 piled by the United States Fishery Commission.* Perhaps 

 Scoresby's record contained in his ' Account of the Arctic 

 Begions ' (ii. pp. 1-396), 1820, is the most complete account 

 of the British fishery to that period ; a chronological record of 

 the chief events is given in Anderson's ' Origin of Commerce ' 

 (1801), vols. iii. and iv. Much information is also to be found 

 in McCulloch's ' Dictionary of Commerce ' (edit. 1844), and 

 scattered through the pages of the ' Gentleman's Magazine.' 



Scoresby, so accurate in all that came under his personal 

 observation, shared the error prevailing at the time he wrote — 

 and, indeed, long after — as to the species of Whale pursued in 

 times long past by the Basque fishermen off the French and 

 Spanish coasts, and which we now know to have been an in- 

 habitant of the temperate waters of the northern oceans, quite 

 distinct from the Polar Whale (rarely to be found south of 

 lat. 76°), with which he was familiar ; and doubtless it was his 

 great experience of the habits of this ice-loving species that led 

 him to suggest that the Whale hunted by those ancient fisher- 

 men might have been Balceno'ptera rostrata — a much more difficult 

 animal to capture ; but he unconsciously solves the difficulty 

 when he tells us that Bight Whales have, on rare occasions, and 



* "History of the American Whale Fishery from its inception to the 

 Year 1876," U.S. Commission of Fish and Fisheries, Eeport for 1875-76 

 (1878), part iv. pp. 1-767. Also U.S. Fisheries Industries, Section v. vol. 2 

 (quarto, 1887), pp. 3-318. 



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