The earliest period at which we find the pursuit of the sperm-whale conducted upon a scientific plan is about 1690, when it was commenced by the American colonists. In 1775, ships were first sent out from ports of Great Britain, but for some years it was necessary to appoint an American commander and harpooner until competent officers could be reared. At the same early date the sperm fishery was chiefly prosecuted in the Atlantic, but Messrs. Enderby's ship "Emilia" having rounded Cape Horn in 1788, first carried the sperm-whale fishery into the Pacific, where its success opened a wide and fruitful field for future exertions. As our whalers became better acquainted with the South Sea, many valuable resorts were discovered. In 1819 the "Syren" (British) first carried on the fishery in the western parts of that great ocean, and in the year 1848 the American whaler "Superior," Captain Roys, penetrated through Behring's Straits into the Icy Sea, and opened the fishery in those remote waters. The year after no less than 154 vessels followed upon his track, and the number has been increasing ever since. At present the Americans are the people which carries on the whale fishery with the greatest energy and good fortune. While of late years only thirty or forty British sail have been employed in the Pacific, our cousins "across the Atlantic" numbered in the year 1841 no less than 650 whalers, manned by 13,500 seamen. One of the causes of their success may be, that while the whale fishery in England is carried on by men of large capital, who are the sole proprietors of the ship, the American interest in one vessel is held by many men of small capital, and not unfrequently by the commander and officers. It must, however, not be forgotten that the Australian colonies, being more conveniently situated than the mother country, fit out many ships for the whale fishery, which is besides conducted in several permanent stations along the coasts of New Zealand, &c. Whale charts have of late years been drawn, on which the best fishing grounds at different seasons are delineated. These maps are not only useful guides for the fishermen, but promise the future solution of the still undecided question of the migration of whales. While some naturalists are of opinion that the cetaceans, flying from the pursuit of man, abandon their old haunts for more sequestered regions, others, like M. Jacquinot (_Zoologie, Voyage de l'Astrolabe et de la Zèlée_) believe that if the whaler is continually obliged to look out for more productive seas, it is not because the whale has migrated, but because he has been nearly extirpated in one place and left unmolested in another.