In the 1860's, Svend Foyn laid the foundation of modern whaling in north Norway. In 1904, whaling was prohibited by the Norwegian Storting because fishermen claimed that it was detrimental to the cod fisheries, and, in the same year, whaling was begun in the Antarctic. Most accounts find a causal connection between the two events: whaling was begun in the one place because it had been prohibited in the other. This was not the case, for none of the whaling companies that were stopped from whaling in north Norway turned straightaway to Antarctic waters. The pioneer in 1904 was a completely new Argentine company, and the first three Norwegian companies to start whaling in the Antarctic, between 1905 and 1907, had never been whaling from north Norway. It has also been said that whalers had over exploited the Norwegian Sea by 1904 and that they had, therefore, to find new whaling grounds. But this is not true, either. From the whaling stations on the Norwegian Sea (excluding Norway), 1 427 whales were killed in 1901, 1 614 in 1902, 1 769 in 1903, 1 921 in 1904, and 2 613 in 1905. There was, therefore, a definite increase in the northern catches in precisely the year that Norwegians started whaling in the south. The reason for the development of whaling in Antarctic waters was neither the prohibition of 1904 nor a decease in the catches in the old northern grounds. The reason lay, in facf, partly in a steep fall in the price of whale oil and partly in a newly awakened global interest in the Antarctic continent and Antarctic waters.

Economic development programmes in rural Alaska face barriers created by ethnic and cultural variations from the standards of urban, industrialized Western society and by the virtual absence among the native population of the local capital and technical capabilities that are needed to achieve economic self-sufficiency. In addition, public and private agencies inevitably assume a dominant role, with respect to the local population, when they invest in or assist native villages or rural regions, a fact that compounds the problems of change. The objective of modernization may get in the way of the objective of self-determination, to the detriment of both. These problems confront programmes for vocational training, housing, transportation, community facilities, community organization, co-operative enterprises and small business development —virtually the entire range of programmes intended to support or to trigger further development and ultimately to increase self-sufficiency in Alaska's native villages and rural regions.

[Captain James W. Robinson was born in April 1824, the son of George William Robinson, a member of the crew of the US whaler General Gates that touched at Hobartown van Diemens Land in 1819, and who left the ship and remained to settle in the colony. He began his schooling in Hobart but, in 1836, was sent to continue his education among.relatives in Providence, Rhode Island. On return to Hobart, he took up whaling and soon became one of the outstanding seamen of the port. He (and after him his son, Alfred) commanded ships of my grandfather's fleet of whalers, which included Offley. In 1858–59, Captain Robinson joined in the rush of sealing voyages to Heard Island that followed first news of the great herds there of Elephant Seal Mirounga leonina, the oil of which then commanded a high price. Robinson's voyage was difficult and dangerous; it ended in tragedy, financial loss and litigation.

This second instalment of our list deals mainly with the competition between the French and English for domination of the fur trade in Hudson Bay. The period has been comparatively little studied and it has been difficult to piece out accurately and succinctly from the sources available the history of this lively period.