The five-oared or six-men boat is that which is in general use; though each fishing-ship generally carries one or two of the largest class. These boats are now commonly built of fir boards, one-half or three-fourths of an inch thick, with timbers, keel, gunwales, stern, and stern-post of oak. An improvement in the timbering of whale-boats has lately been made, by sawing the timber out of very straight grained oak, and bending them to the required form after being made supple by the application of steam, or immersion in boiling water. This improvement, which renders the timbers more elastic than when they are sawn out of crooked oak, and at the same time makes the boat stronger and lighter, was suggested by Thomas Brodrick, esq., of Whitby, ship-builder. Though the principle has long been acted upon in clincher-built boats, with ash timbers, the application to carver-built whale-boats is, I believe, new. The bow and stern of Greenland boats are both sharp, and in appearance very similar, but the stern forms a more acute angle than the bow. The keel has some depression in the middle from which the facility of turning is acquired. The instruments of general use in the capture of the whale are the harpoon and the lance. The harpoon is an instrument of iron, of about three feet in length. It consists of three conjoined parts, called the “socket,” “shank,” and “mouth,” the latter of which includes the barbs or “withers.” This instrument, if we except a small addition to the barbs and some enlargement of dimensions, maintains the same form in which it was originally used in the fishery two centuries ago. At that time, the mouth or barbed extremity was of a triangular shape, united at the shank in the middle of one of the sides, and this being scooped out on each side of the shank formed two simple flat barbs. In the course of last century, an improvement was made by adding another small barb, resembling the beard of a fishhook, within each of the former withers in a reverse position. The two principal withers in the present improved harpoon measure about eight inches in length and six in breadth, the shank is eighteen inches to two feet in length, and four-tenths of an inch in diameter, and the socket, which is hollow, swells from the size of the shank to near two inches diameter, and is about six inches in length. Now, when the harpoon is forced by a blow into the fat of the whale, and the line is held tight, the principal withers seize the strong ligamentous fibres of the blubber, and prevent it from being withdrawn; and, in the event of its being pulled out so far as to remain entangled by one wither only, which is frequently the case, then the little reversed barb, or “stop-wither,” as it is called, collecting a number of the same reticulated sinewy fibres, which are very numerous near the skin, prevents the harpoon from being shaken out by the ordinary motions of the whale. The point and exterior edges of the barbs of the harpoon