BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 15 
ured during the same period, yielded 11 cwt. each ; but in the past 
season the averages have been 15 and 5J cwt. respectively.* 
This may at first sight appear very remarkable, but it is quite intel- 
ligible to those acquainted with the habits and seasonal distribution of 
these creatures. We have seen that the Strait fishermen, owing to cir- 
cumstances of weather and ice, missed the young whales, which would 
have reduced their average; whereas the Greenland fishermen, like- 
wise, from force of circumstances, could only get among young whales 
early in the season, and later on, owing in a great measure to the ice 
being so closely packed and its edge so far west, they missed the south 
fishing altogether. But this is not all. From long experience of the 
habits and migration of the whales, the regularity of which is remarka- 
ble, the whalers know precisely where they should be found, under 
favorable circumstances, at certain definite periods, and not only so, 
but also the age and size which may be expected. I am not at liberty 
to enter more fully into this subject, fearing to commit a breach of con- 
fidence, as it is the application of accumulated experience on such points 
which enables one man to succeed in capturing whales, when a less 
accurate observer would fail ; but I may add — to show that the migra- 
tory habits of the whales have not changed — that the celebrated capt- 
ure of 44 whales by Captain Suttar, of the Resolution, in 1814, was 
effected in the same latitude as produced the Greenland whales of the 
past season. Captain SuttaFs average was 5 tons 13 cwt., and 14 of 
the Greenland whales last season, taken by two vessels fishing together 
in the same latitude as SuttaFs, gave precisely the same average. 
It is difficult to say what is the value of commodities which are hardly 
marketable; but at £20 per ton, the 477 tons of oil brought home by 
the Dundee and Peterhead vessels would be worth £9,540 ($46,364), 
and the 18 J tons of bone at, say, £1,100 per ton all round, f another 
£20,350 ($98,901), or a total of £29,890 ($145,265), against £31,800 
($154,548) in the season of 1885. 
There has been a further considerable falling off in the British bottle- 
nose fishery, only 23 whales, yielding 22 tons of oil, having been brought 
in, against 84 killed in 1885 ; but 1 am informed that the Norwegians 
have in the past season killed the enormous number of 1,600 or 1,700 
of these creatures, which has so flooded the markets of London and 
Glasgow with their oil that it has been sold as low as £17 or £18 per 
ton — a circumstance which will account for the neglect of this branch 
* As before stated, the yield of bone is more reliable than that of the oil for pur- 
poses of comparison ; I therefore prefer to give that of the bone only, but each cwt. 
of the latter may be taken as representing an equivalent of one ton of the former. 
t Some “ size bone” (i. e bone the slips of which are 6 feet and upwards in length) 
has recently been sold at £1,550 per ton ; but as the “ undersize” bone produces only 
half the price of the “ size,” the price for the average is largely reduced. This must 
have been particularly the case in the past season, many of the whales being very 
gmallj and the proportion of undersize bone being consequently unusually large, 
