Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/108

84 vessel, and in the last 13,382, showing an increased yield instead of a falling off, as might have been expected. In the first period, too, many of the vessels made second, and some even third trips. In spite of the number killed by man and by natural causes, a goodly residue must escape annually (sometimes when the season is unfavourable to the sealers a large proportion) to continue the species, notwithstanding all the dangers to which they are liable.

Mr. Thorburn has been kind enough to obtain for me the following information with regard to the doings of the Cabot Whale-fishing Company, which is useful as indicating the seasonal movements of the cetaceans named:—

The 'Cabot' left St. John's on Nov. 1st, 1899, for Hermitage Bay, and commenced fishing in that neighbourhood on Dec. 1st. She killed five "Sulphur-bottoms" before the end of the year; in January she got four others, and in February three; in March seven, and in April five; in May seventeen. In April she killed her first "Humpback," and in May five others, as well as four "Finbacks"—in all, fifty-one Whales. When this information was received she was on the point of leaving her winter fishing-ground, and going north, probably to Green Bay, where during the summer the last two species mentioned above are found. The fifty-one Whales yielded 250 tuns of oil, which is this year worth £20 per tun, and the seven Sulphur-bottoms about a ton of whalebone over one foot long, which is known as payable bone, but is of poor quality.

Just twenty years having passed since I contributed the first of these annual notes on the Seal and Whale Fishery to the 'Proceedings' of the Glasgow Natural History Society (the nineteen which have followed are in the consecutive volumes of 'The Zoologist'), and great changes having taken place in that time, especially in the Whale-fishery, to which we have now to refer, it may not be amiss to contrast the season of 1881 with that which has just passed; and, as the condition of the ice to a very large extent rules the success or otherwise of both industries, more especially that of the Whale-fishery, I shall first refer to the great contrast which exists in that respect between the two periods.

The year 1881 was as remarkable for what is known as a