Page:The Geologist, volume 5.djvu/122

98 sent sea with that of the Crag, is the rarity of certain species in modern times and their extreme abundance in times past. It is only at long intervals that we see now on our shores some stray dolphin or a whale that has wandered out of its way. The cetacean that we see stranded in our latitudes is generally an isolated individual, which its troop have rejected or the tempests have separated from its associates. It was not so when, in other times, the numerous species of the Crag sea lived; many of those great cetacea had there their regular stations, while others made periodic visitations. In respect to their abundance and regular migrations, one discovers even since the historic period very considerable changes, to which the rapacity of man perhaps has not been foreign.

"It is known that in the ninth century the Basques . . . harpooned the whale in the Gulf of Gascony, and pursued it even as far as the North Sea. Different charters prove that associations of whale-fishers, known under the name of Socieias or Communio Walmannorum, existed in the 11th century on the coast of France. These fisheries were so successful in the Channel, that mention is made in these charters of the sale of the fresh flesh. Nowadays it is truly an event if by chance one of these great cetaceans presents itself in these latitudes. Cuvier, struck with this difference, thought that the whales had fled before man, and that these animals no longer found safety except amongst the reefs of polar ice.

"This explanation of the great naturalist, although generally accepted, does not, however, accord with facts. The whale of the Channel is not the same as the whale of the Polar circle. It is not without reason that for a long time my friend Eschricht has opposed the hypothesis of Cuvier; and the former, the learned professor of Copenhagen, has shown that the Icelanders knew perfectly, as far back as the twelfth century, these giants of the Channel from those of the North. In a manuscript of that distant period, the Iceland fishermen specified the characteristic differences of the two species. . . If the whale pursued by the Basques is not the Baleine franche of the North—the Mysticetus—what is it then? Has it ever