APPENDIX. 
Remarks upon the Failure which has for some Years attended 
the Whale-Fishery ; with Considerations for removing the 
Obstacles which have occasioned the same. 
Of the importance of the Greenland Fishery, in its direct 
objects of procuring an article of great profit to the na- 
tion ; and, collaterally, as a nursery of seamen for our 
navy, there can be no doubt. But the fishery is now car- 
ried on by individuals at very extraordinary and increased 
expense, while the late the losses of ships 
crushed among the ice, and, above all, the vast reduction in 
the price of oil, owing to the substitution of coal gas to light 
this metropolis^', have considerably dispirited enterprise. 
It is evident, that a continuance of such failures alone, 
without other casualties to which the speculation is liable, 
may quite extinguish adventure, and, finally, deprive the 
nation of the advantages of the northern whale fishery. 
The failures of late seasons have principally arisen 
* The advantage of gas produced from oil, compared with 
that obtained from coal, is so great that it is astonishing that oil 
gas is not in general use. The gas from oil has no bad nor dis- 
agreeable quality, it gives a far more brilliant light than the 
other, “ one cubic foot of gas from oil, going as far as twice that 
quantity of coal gas,” and it is moreover much cheaper. That 
from coal on the contrary, is extremely offensive to the smell, 
dangerous to the health on being inhaled ; and injurious to furni- 
ture, books, plate, pictures, &c. 
