WHALE FISHERY. Whales are songht after for many useful purposes which they render to man: The flesh of the Manatee whale is excellent eating. The Narwhal, a kind of whale, is valued for its blubber and its ivory tusk. The Sperm Whale yields eight or ten barrels of spermaceti, besides • oil and whalebone. To the • Esquimanx and the Greenlander the Greenland Whale is all in all. They eat the flesh and fat with indescribable relish. The membranes of the abdomen servo them for Clothing, and the thin trans parent peritoneum admits light through the windows of their huts, whilst it keeps out the weather. The bones are made into props for their tents, or aid in the formation of their boats, and supply them with harpoons and spears for the capture of the narwhal, the seal, and greater sea birds. The sinews divided late filaments are used as thread for sewing their dress, &e. To civilised nations, the oil made from its fat or blubber, and the whale bone, have long made it a great commercial object.
The Arctic regions, between the northern parts of America and Europe, have for some centuries been the chief seat of the Whale Fishery. The whales were so abundant that the fishing was easy and the profits great ; but in later years the whales have evidently lessened in number, and the fishery has be. come gradually more precarious. At first there were settlements on the shores of Green land and other lands in the north, where tho whale blubber was boiled down into oil, and in that state sent -to England; but in later years it has been the practice to bring the blubber itself to England, and there boil it down. Between 1815 and 1834 the number
of English ships engaged in the northern whale fishery varied from 76 to 159; the an nual capture of whales varied from 101 to 2018 (so very uncertain is the success of this em ployment) ; the annual yield of oil, 210S to 18,745 tuns ; and of whalebone, 119 to 940 tons. So hazardous are these enterprises, that there were not less than 90 whale ships lost in the above-named twenty years, of which 19 were lost in the disastrous year 1830. Hull and Peterhead are the chief British ports to which the whalers belong ; but the northern Whale fishery has materially declined in the seventeen years since 1834. • The Whale Fishery of the Southern Ocean has spring into importance as that of the Northern has declined. The relation which the newly-settled Auckland Isles bear to the Southern Whale. Fishery is noticed in an earlier article [Amman) IsLuins]. The southern ,fishery is prosecuted energetically by the United'States, as well as by Britain and other countries. " • The following are the numbers of vessels engaged in the American whale fisheries, and the quantities'of sperm Oil and whale oil pro cured, in the last 10 years The year 1860 was a very profitable one in the southern fishery, and more than usually unprofitable in the northern.