Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/94

68 previous season, the scarcity causing oil of this class to advance to £28 per ton.

With reference to the Fin-Whale fishery recently established by the "Cabot Whale-fishing Company" (see Notes for 1898, p. 107), Mr. Thorburn has been kind enough to obtain for me the following particulars:—The 'Cabot' fished in Hermitage Bay in the end of February and during the month of March, killing eleven Whales, all "Sulphur-bottoms." This species was found in plenty in the locality named until the middle of July, and any number could have been taken had the Company been in a position to deal with them. Mr. Thorburn's informant states that these immense Whales appear nearly always to be in good condition, and he believes they reproduce only once in three years. From the middle of July until the first week in October the 'Cabot' fished in Notre Dame Bay, killing ninety-eight Whales, nine of them "Humpbacks," the remainder being "Finbacks." In October these Whales become scarce and poor in condition, owing it is believed to their reproducing some time previous to that date, and being engaged suckling their young; they then leave the coast, probably following their food supply. The ninety-eight Whales yielded 286 tons of oil and six tons of bone; the oil produced about £17 per ton; the "Whale-bone," I imagine, would be of little value. It will be observed that, in speaking of the Whales killed by the Cabot Company, I have used only the popular names applied to them by their captors; this I have done advisedly, for, in addition to the uncertainty with regard to their true species, and the unsettled state of the nomenclature of the group, it was impossible to speak with authority without opportunities of personal investigation, and might only add to the existing confusion; it is therefore with pleasure that I hear from Dr. F.W. True, of the United States National Museum, that he spent a month at the station last summer, and that he hopes to do for the Newfoundland Fin-Whales what Mr. A.H. Cocks and Prof. Robert Collett have already done for a similar fishery on the coast of Lapland. It is Dr. True's intention shortly to make known the general result of his investigations, which will eventually be embodied in a contemplated monograph of the Finbacks of the American waters. Dr. True has already published in the 'Pro-