Page:The ocean and its wonders.djvu/185

 So much for theory. Now for facts that have been observed, and that tend, more or less, to corroborate this proposition of an open polar sea. The habits of the whale have gone far to prove it. The log-books of whalers have for many years been carefully examined and compared by scientific men. These investigations have led to the discovery "that the tropical regions of the ocean are to the 'right' whale as a sea of fire, through which he cannot pass, and into which he never enters." It has also been ascertained that the same kind of whale which is found off the shores of Greenland, in Baffin's Bay, &c., is found in the North Pacific, and about Behring's Straits; and that the "right" whale of the southern hemisphere is a different animal from that of the northern. How, then, came the Greenland whales to pass from the Greenland seas to the Pacific? Not by the Capes Horn or Good Hope; the "sea of fire" precluded that. Clearly there was ground here for concluding that they did so through the (supposed) open sea lying beyond, or rather within, the frozen ocean.

It is true the objection might be made, that the same kind of whale which exists in the North Pacific exists also in the North Atlantic, although they never cross over to see each other. But another discovery has met this objection.

It is the custom among whalers to have their harpoons marked with date and name of ship, and Dr. Scoresby, in his work on arctic voyages men-