times, and then descend. The noise which they make in blowing is very loud, and the spout of water ejected ascends a great height into the air, appearing at a distance like a puff of smoke. They often assume, as if in sport, a vertical position, with the head down, and flap the surface of the water with the tail, making a sound which is heard two or three miles off. The Greenland whale is not properly gregarious, being generally found alone or in pairs, except when numbers are attracted to particular feeding-grounds, as is sometimes the case in the bays and inlets of northern coasts.

The Cacholot or sperm whale may be said to inhabit all seas, although it is most abundant in the southern hemisphere; it is occasionally stranded on the coasts of Britain. The sperm whale sometimes reaches the length of seventy or eighty feet. The head is enormously large, forming about one-half of the entire bulk of the animal, and occupying more than one-third of the entire length. The general colour is very dark gray, nearly black on the upper parts, lighter beneath. Old males, or, in the language of the South Sea whalers, old bull-whales, usually have a large gray spot on the front of the head. The muzzle is very obtuse, almost as if suddenly cut off in front, the breadth of it almost equalling the thickness of the body. In a protuberance on the upper part of it, is the blowhole, which is single, situated a little on the left side, and in form not unlike the letter S elongated. The mouth is very large and wide; and the throat, unlike that of the Greenland whale, is very wide, sufficiently so to admit the body of a man. The upper jaw projects some feet beyond the lower, and is destitute both of teeth and whalebone; the lower jaw has from 20 to 25 teeth on each side, according to the age of the animal. Just above the eyes, the dorsal line rises considerably; the dorsal fin is also represented by a protuberance about half-way between the neck and the tail and these parts are seen above water in the ordinary swimming of the animal, which is at the rate of from three to seven miles an hour, and just under the surface of the water, although when alarmed it swims with greater velocity, striking the water upwards and downwards with its tail with great force.

The enormous head of the cacholot is in great part occupied by a cavity in front of and above the skull, called by whalers the case, which is a receptacle for spermaceti. This substance being light, it is not wonderful that the animal in swimming raises its head above the surface of the water, which it also often does even when at rest, 'like a black rock in the ocean.' The case frequently holds as much as ten large barrels of spermaceti. The substance which it contains is in a semi-fluid state, but hardens on cooling: it consists of spermaceti and oil; the oil is separated by draining and squeezing, and the spermaceti is further purified, till, instead of being a yellow unctuous mass, in which state it is brought home by the whalers, it assumes a beautiful pearly white, flaky, almost crystalline

appearance. It is chiefly used in making the finer kinds of candles; it is also an ingredient in various ointments. We learn from Shakspeare that in his time it was believed to be of sovereign efficacy 'for an inward bruise.' The spermaceti was at one time imagined to be the brain of the whale; what purpose it serves in the animal economy, is not well known, except that already alluded to of giving buoyancy to the fore-part of the huge body. Cavities filled with spermaceti are distributed over the body, and even ramify through the external fat or blubber, although the principal mass is in the head. The blubber of the cacholot is not nearly equal in thickness to that of the Greenland whale, being only about fourteen inches thick on the breast of a large whale, and from eight to eleven inches on other parts of the body. It is called by whalers the blanket. The junk, a thick elastic mass, which occupies the fore-part of the head, immediately under the case, yields also a considerable quantity of sperm-oil.

The cacholot feeds upon fishes and cephalopodous molluscs. Squids and cuttle-fishes appear to be its chief food. It is gregarious in its habits, and the herds are called schools by whalers. Five hundred or more have been seen in a single herd. Large herds generally consist of females, with only a few males; herds of young males also occur; when solitary individuals are met with, they are almost always old males. Terrible conflicts often take place among the males, and it is not unusual to find the lower jaw deformed in consequence of having been dislocated or broken in these battles.

HISTORY OF THE WHALE-FISHERY.

The

Norse legends make mention of ships sent to Greenland to catch whales in the ninth century. The Northmen were accustomed to the pursuit on their own coasts; and when they settled in the north of France, they carried on the fishery in the Bay of Biscay, which was frequented by whales in considerable numbers, until the eager persecution they were subjected to made them disappear about the fifteenth century. As early as 1315 and 1324, there are acts of the English parliament in reference to the whale, decreeing, among other things, that any of those animals that might be cast ashore or captured in the territorial sea should belong to the crown. whale is thus a royal fish. In 1594, English vessels were sent to the northern whale-fishery off Cape Breton, and one of them lighted on the wreck of two Biscayan whalers, from which she took on board a large quantity of whalebone. About the beginning of the seventeenth century, the seas around Spitzbergen were the chief scene of the fishery. The British Muscovy Company obtained a royal charter, giving them a monopoly of the whale-fishery off the coasts of Spitzbergen, on the pretence of its having been discovered by Sir Hugh Willoughby, although, in fact, it was discovered by the

Dutch navigator Barentz. Other nations were not disposed to acknowledge the claims of the English; the Dutch in particular sent out a strong fleet, between which and the ships of the Muscovy Company an engagement took place in 1618, and the English were defeated. The Spitzbergen bays and seas were afterwards divided into fishing-stations, allocated to the whalers of the rival nations. No nation now asserts a claim to the exclusive right of whale-fishing in any quarter.

The English for some time prosecuted the whale-fishery sluggishly and with incompetent means; the Dutch carried it on with great vigour and success. During the latter half of the seventeenth century, the Dutch furnished almost all Europe with oil. In 1680, they had 260 ships and about 14,000 men employed in the whalefishery; but from that time the Dutch fishery began to decline. In 1732, Great Britain attempted to encourage the whale-fishery by a bounty of 30s. a ton to every ship of 200 tons engaged in it, which was raised in 1749 to 40s., reduced to 30s. in 1777, and again raised to 40s. in 1781. The object of the bounty was not only to encourage the trade, but to make it a nursery for seamen. Ships, however, were fitted out rather for the bounty than for the capture of whales, and during the next five years after the reduction of the bounty in 1777, the number of ships employed in the trade was reduced from 105 to 39. After 1781, it rapidly increased, and continued to increase although the bounty was reduced. The bounty was finally altogether withdrawn in 1824. In 1815, when the British whalefishery was in its most flourishing condition, only 164 ships were engaged in it. The Dutch whale-fishery had in the meantime almost entirely ceased, owing to the national calamities consequent on the French Revolution.

In Britain, the whale-fishery enjoyed almost uninterrupted success from 1795 to 1830. In 1814, for instance, the total catch of the British ships engaged in the fishery was over 20,000 tuns of oil; and in the following year the Hull vessels alone obtained 8000 tuns! The fishery began to decline about the year 1830, when Dundee lost two out of her fleet of nine ships, and obtained only eleven fish. In 1835, Hull lost five vessels out of a fleet of twentythree whalers, and got very few fish. The year 1836 was also most disastrous for the whaling interest. The ships sent out were comparatively few, and about thirty of them returned empty. The three following years were equally bad; and in 1840, Hull had only two ships bound for the whale-fishing, instead of sixty, as in the days of yore; the average of late years from this port has been three ships.

The New England colonies embarked in this fishery at an early period. At first they fished in boats from their own shores, which were then frequently visited by whales. But about 1740, when the fish ceased to come to be caught, they began to go in ships in search

of them, both in the northern and southern seas. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, Massachusetts alone employed 304 whaleships, more than half of which went to the southern seas. Burke in one of his famous orations alluded to the wealth which the Americans derived in his day (1774) from their whale-fisheries. 'We learn,' he says, 'that while some of them draw the line or strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude, 'and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed with their fisheries-no climate that is not witness of their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pursued by this recent people-a people who are still in the gristle, and not hardened into manhood.' Nantucket in Massachusetts was at one time the chief centre of the industry, but New Bedford afterwards attained that position, and is now the greatest whaling-port in the world; although the fishery has of late years materially declined there as well as in Europe.

It was with the capture of the 'right' whale that the New Englanders began; but in 1712, one Christopher Hussey of Nantucket, being driven off shore, fell in with and killed a sperm whale, and from that time the Americans have made the cacholot-fishery in a manner their own. Burke's speech was thought to have incited the fittingout, in the year 1775, of several British ships for the spermaceti whale-fishery. They were not, however, very successful in their venture; and government in the following year offered bounties to the most successful ship. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, France began to take a successful part in the sperm-oil fishery, and in 1790, we are told the French had at least forty ships engaged in it. The field of this industry was prodigiously widened when (in 1788) an English ship, stimulated perhaps by the government bounty, which was raised to £700 for the fullest ships, led the way in rounding Cape Horn and pursuing the cacholot in the Pacific. Óne English vessel, the Syren, after an absence of two years and eight months on the coast of Japan, returned with the enormous quantity of 356 tuns of sperm-oil! At one time, no less than ninety British ships were engaged in the South Sea fishery; at present there is

not one.

THE CAPTURE OF THE WHALE.

In whaling-ships destined for the northern seas, strength is of more importance than speed; they are therefore fortified with additional planks, iron plates, ice-knees, and many timbers and stanchions in the interior. Steam, with the screw propeller, has been recently introduced, and has many obvious advantages. Each ship has a crew of from forty to sixty, and carries from six to eight boats, twenty-five

feet long, and strongly built. British whalers for the north seas are usually provisioned only for a few months; but for the distant fisheries of the Pacific, the American whalers lay in a stock of provisions to last them for two or three years. When the oil is tryed-out on board, as in the South Sea whalers, a supply of casks for storing it is also required; the Scottish whalers usually bring home the blubber in tanks. An assortment of harpoons and lances is also an essential part of the equipment of a whaler. The harpoon in its simplest form is a barbed spear about five feet long, having a long line attached, and is hurled or plunged by the hand into the animal's side. The gunharpoon is a short bolt of iron, with the barb at one end, and a ring and chain for the attachment of the line; this is fired from a small swivel cannon attached to the boat. The hand-harpoon is still preferred by the fishermen. It is a matter of great difficulty and hazard to secure a fish even after it is struck; and therefore many contrivances have been suggested to make its death more speedy and sure. One of the best was that of Dr Christison of Edinburgh; which consisted in so placing glass tubes containing prussic acid in the shaft of the harpoon, that when the line was pulled tight they should be broken in the animal's body, and cause instant death. The plan was tried with great success; but the whale-fishers have a prejudice against so deadly a weapon, and decline to use it: they seem to dread to touch the carcass of a whale that has been killed by such a powerful poison.

If we describe the proceedings of a whale-ship from Dundee or Peterhead to Davis Strait, we shall have described the business of northern whaling generally. The vessels proceeding from those ports are now screw-steamers of 400 to 600 tons, costing each, when fully equipped and provisioned, about £16,000. It is usual for whalers to make a voyage in early spring to the seal-fishing (see page 28). Returning from this, they start again for the whaling-ground; and they usually anchor for a few days on their way in Bressay Sound, off Lerwick, for the purpose of completing their crews, which are in a great measure composed of Shetlanders. Everybody on board a whaler, from the master to the boys, is paid partly by fixed wages, partly by a certain regulated interest in the proceeds of the voyage. The earnings of a common sailor may average about £40. Harpooners and other functionaries rate higher. If the state of the ice and other circumstances allow a ship to reach the usual haunts of the whale by the beginning of July, there is every chance of success. A constant outlook is now kept from the mast-head; and as soon as a whale is descried the word is given, and every man rushes to his post, those that happen to be in their hammocks tumbling on deck, it may be, with part of their clothes in their hands. In an incredibly short time, each boat is manned with its appointed crew; and now begins an exciting contest which boat shall reach the whale first. It may be that another ship has sighted the same fish,