of smaller steamships (chasers). Land stations, however, are still in use. The first grounds exploited by Norwegian whalers were those off the home coasts, and they did not turn their attention to other parts of the North Atlantic until the end of the nineteenth century. They erected stations on the shores of Iceland, the Faroe Is., and the Shetlands. In 1903 whaling stations were built at Svalbard (Spits- bergen) and Bear Island. In 1904 the first whaling expedition set out from Norway (Sandefjord) for the South Seas, where a station was erected on the island of St. Georgia. In the following year the second expedition left for the S. Shetlands. Its equipment included a floating factory — which subsequently became the usual practice in those waters. In 1912 Norwegian whalers extended their activities to the S. Orkneys. They also began to work grounds off the coast of S. Africa (1908). Other areas were gradually exploited, including grounds off E. and W. Africa, Australia, Brazil and Chile, and the west coast of the U.S.A. Until 1925 whaling operations in the South Seas could be carried on only by licence granted by the British Government; but after that time several whaling companies were enabled to dis- pense with British licences through the adoption of large floating factories, with which they could hunt with good results on the high seas inde- pendently of shore stations. Moreover, a few 151