e quantity fetches more than L1,500. The Rorquals, or
"Finners," have smaller heads and mouths; their whalebone is so short
as to be valueless, but they grow to even greater size than the Right
whales and are found on our own coasts and all over the world. The
Humpback whale is one of these "Finners," distinguished by its
excessively long flippers and huge bulk.

The Biscay whale was the first of these great creatures to be hunted.
The Basques began its capture as early as the ninth century. It was
exterminated by them in the Bay of Biscay, and only saved from
complete extinction elsewhere by the discovery of the more valuable
Arctic or Greenland whale. The capture of the Greenland whale began in
1612; and in 200 years the unceasing pursuit of this species had
driven it to the remote places of the Arctic Ocean. It is now so rare
that it is not worth while to send a ship out for the purpose of
hunting it, and it will probably never recover its numbers. An idea of
its value and former abundance may be formed from the fact that
between 1669 and 1778 it yielded to 1,400 Dutch vessels about 57,000
individuals, of which the baleen and oil produced a money value of
four million pounds sterling. Of late years a single large Greenland
whale would bring L900 for its whalebone and L300 for its oil. These
two great Right whales having been practically exterminated, the
merciless hunt has now been turned on to the wilder and less valuable
Finback whales or Finners. In these days of steam and electric light
the Arctic night is robbed of its terrors, and the whale chase goes on
very fast. The shot harpoon was invented in 1870 by Sven Foyn, a
Norwegian, and is the most deadly and extraordinary weapon ever
devised by man for the pursuit of helpless animals. It is this
invention (a commercial, not a scientific, discovery!) which has, in
conjunction with swift steamships, rendered the destruction of whales
a matter of ease and deadly certainty. It is this which is being used
on the Irish as on the Scandinavian coast, resulting in the pollution
of the air and water by the carcases of the slaughtered beasts from
which the oil has been extracted. This revolting butchery, without
foresight or intelligence, is carried on solely for the satisfaction
of human greed, and apparently will be stopped only by the extinction
of the yet remaining whales. In forty years in the middle of last
century the whale fishery of the United States yielded 300,000