292 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Aug. 22, 1908. 
profitable source of revenue, and a great assist¬ 
ance to the laboring people of the colony for 
many years to come.” 
This advice, however, was not heeded, the 
only restriction placed on whaling being that 
stations should .not be nearer one another than 
twenty miles and that but one steamer should 
be employed. These restrictions were practi¬ 
cally of no avail, as one steamer was all that 
could then be employed to advantage and a run 
of twenty miles is nothing to a 12 knot vessel. 
So whaling stations rapidly multiplied until by 
1905 eighteen were in operation, occupying all 
the more favorable locations about Newfound¬ 
land, Labrador and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 
and fifteen steamers were employed. The ef¬ 
fects of this over-multiplication were felt at 
once, and while in 1903 three steamers took 85S 
whales, or an average of 286 each, in 1905 fif¬ 
teen steamers took but 892 whales or an average 
of only 59 a vessel. 
In 1903 3 vessels took. 858 whales 
“ 1904 10 “ “ 1275 “ 
“ 1905 15 “ “ 892 “ 
“ 1906 14 “ “ 429 “ 
“ 1907 14 “ “ 481 “ 
3935 wlislcs 
Taken between 1S98T902, estimated. 350 “ 
4285 whales 
Thus in ten years more than 4,000 whales 
have been captured in the immediate vicinity of 
Newfoundland. The effect was disastrous and 
caused the ruin of the smaller companies, the 
chief sufferers being the smaller shareholders 
who had invested their entire capital. 
One of the arguments in favor of indiscrimi¬ 
nate whaling has been the theory that whales 
had the whole world to draw upon, and that the 
depletion in any one locality would soon be sup¬ 
plied by overflow from another. To a slight 
extent this may be true, for there seems some 
reason to believe that whales do now and then 
pass from the Pacific to the Atlantic*, but on 
the whole whales are restricted in their range 
as other animalsf and extermination in one place 
means extermination in that locality for all 
time. Another fallacy was the belief that the 
supply of whales was practically limitless and 
that one might “slay and slay and slay” con¬ 
tinuously. There is not a more mischievous 
term than “inexhaustible supply,” and certainly 
none more untrue. So we see our inexhaustible 
forests on the verge of disappearing, our inex¬ 
haustible supplies of coal and oil daily growing 
less, and the end of the inexhaustible supply of 
whales in sight. Man is recklessly spending the 
capital nature has been centuries in accumulat¬ 
ing 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 contains, 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- 
*Capt. Bull states that a sulphur-bottom whale shot on 
the coast of Norway contained a harpoon fired into it 
on the coast of Kamchatka and that a humpback killed 
off Aquaforte was found to have in the flesh an unex¬ 
ploded bomb lance fired from a San Francisco whaler 
in the Pacific. 
tFor example, the sulphur-bottom is not found or 
occurs as a straggler on the east coast of Newfoundland, 
although once common on the south coast. 
suits 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.^ The 
great bowhead, owing to its restriction to a por¬ 
tion 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 extermina¬ 
tion^ And yet this monster once flourished in 
such numbers that for nearly three centuries its 
capture gave employment to hundreds of vessels 
and thousands of men. How abundant this 
species actually was we can only surmise 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 greatest activity 
numbered from 500 to more than 600 sail, while 
in England, our most active competitor, from 
twenty-five to sixty vessels cleared from the 
port of Hull alone, and several other towns 
contributed to swell the Arctic fleet which com¬ 
prised from 150 to 250 vessels. 
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 Ameri¬ 
can 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 coast of Greenland, no 
less than 10,207 whales, and a fair estimate of 
the total English catch would be about 20,000 
right and bowhead whales, so that in two cen¬ 
turies 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 1660 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 nowadays 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- 
tThe writer is quite aware that this species still sur¬ 
vives, and, owing to the cessation of whaling for some 
years, has even increased in some localities. This in¬ 
crease 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 bowhead 
whales was foreseen as early as 1850, and comments made 
on the large number of whales lost by sinking, and on 
the evil results of killing the right whale on its breeding 
grounds. 
^According to Wieland, the number of bowheads taken 
by the Dutch between 1669 and 1758 was 57,590. 
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 
that some of the money being spent in futile 
endeavors to reach the North Pole might much 
better be devoted to chartering a whaler and 
securing one or two examples of the bowhead 
before it is too late. 
The right whale was the first to be com¬ 
mercially exterminated. That is so reduced in 
numbers that its pursuit was no longer profit¬ 
able because it frequented the shores of tem¬ 
perate regions and there brought forth its young. 
It required but few years to wipe out the Cali¬ 
fornia gray whale, as it was confined to a com¬ 
paratively small area and the decimation of the 
others is but a matter of time. 
The great bowhead, as we have just seen, is 
on the verge of actual, not merely commercial, 
extermination and is liable to be blotted out of 
existence at any time, and other species will 
follow unless something is done to preserve them. 
For many years certain species of whales, 
notably the sulphur-bottom, enjoyed more or 
less immunity from pursuit, due to the difficulty 
of taking them by methods then in vogue and 
the small profit yielded when they were taken. 
But when the present appliances for taking 
whales were perfected, the death knell of these 
whales was sounded and unless some measures 
are taken to protect them, they, too, will suffer 
the fate of the bowhead. 
Whaling stations are being established the 
world over wherever the conditions are favor¬ 
able. There are several on the Pacific coast, 
several on the coast of Patagonia, and while in 
deference to the fishermen, restrictions have 
been placed on the Norwegian whale fisheries, 
other stations have been opened in Iceland and 
the Faeroes. There is some whaling from New 
Zealand and South Africa, and concessions have 
been granted for other parts of the world. This 
does not include whaling for sperm whales and 
humpback carried on from various Atlantic and 
South American ports. Moreover the rapid de¬ 
cline of the Newfoundland whale fishery has led 
some of the companies to send their steamers 
south in winter, accompanied by a large steamer 
fitted out for cutting in whales and trying out 
the oil, thus acting as a floating whaling station 
that may be moved from place to place as occas¬ 
ion requires or favorable conditions offer. 
We speak of the decline of the whaling in¬ 
dustry when it is really the passing of the whale, 
for there can be no industry in the proper sense 
of the word when there is no planting, only 
reaping, no attempt to provide for the harvest 
to be gathered. 
Whales can be protected and protected very 
easily, but it can only be done by international 
agreement. When we are far enough advanced, 
many industries, like whaling and sealing, now 
on the verge of extermination, may be pursued 
for all time. This may be very difficult to bring 
about, but may be accomplished in time. The 
pity of it is, from a purely practical standpoint, 
that animals which can so readily be preserved, 
should be swept out of existence.—Bulletin New 
York Zoological Society. 
