170 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. hi. 
the Polar Sea, and as there has been no whale fishing on the 
coast of Spitzbergen for the last forty or fifty years, this state of 
things shows how difficult it is to get an animal type to return 
to a region where it has once been extirpated, or from which it 
has been driven away. 
The whale which Captain Svend Foeyn has almost exclusively 
hunted on the coast of Finmark since 1864 belongs to quite 
another species, Uaohvalen {Balcenoptem SiVtaldii Gray); and 
there are likewise other species of the whale which still in pretty 
large numbers follow shoals offish to the Norwegian coast, where 
they sometimes strand and are killed in considerable numbers. 
A taiidhval, killer or sword-fish {Orca gladiator Desm.) was even 
captured some years ago in the harbour of Tromsoe. This whale 
was already dying of suffocation, caused by an attempt to 
swallow an eider which entered the gullet, not, as the proper way 
is, with the head, but with the tail foremost. When the mouth¬ 
ful should have slidden down, it was prevented by the stiff 
feathers sticking out, and the bird stuck in the whale’s throat, 
which, to judge by the extraordinary struggles it immediately 
began to make, must have caused it great inconvenience, 
which was increased still more when the inhabitants did not 
neglect to take advantage of its helpless condition to harpoon it. 
