|
Table of Contents
Chapter 32
CETOLOGY
Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost in its unshored, harborless
immensities. Ere that come to pass; ere the Pequod's weedy hull rolls side by
side with the barnacled hulls of the leviathan; at the outset it is but well
to attend to a matter almost indispensable to a thorough appreciative
understanding of the more special leviathanic revelations and allusions of all
sorts which are to follow. It is some systematized exhibition of the whale in
his broad genera, that I would now fain put before you. Yet is it no easy
task. The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here
essayed. Listen to what the best and latest authorities have laid down. No
branch of Zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled Cetology, says
Captain Scoresby, A. D. . It is not my intention, were it in my power, to
enter into the inquiry as to the true method of dividing the cetacea into
groups and families.... Utter confusion exists among the historians of this
animal (sperm whale), says Surgeon Beale, A. D. . Unfitness to pursue our
research in the unfathomable waters. Impenetrable veil covering our knowledge
of the cetacea. A field strewn with thorns. All these incomplete indications
but serve to torture us naturalists. Thus speak of the whale, the great Cuvier,
and John Hunter, and Lesson, those lights of zoology and anatomy.
Nevertheless, though of real knowledge there be little, yet of books there are
..
2 a plenty; and so in
some small degree, with cetology, or the science of whales. many are the men,
small and great, old and new, landsmen and seamen, who have at large or in
little, written of the whale. Run over a few: --The Authors of the Bible;
Aristotle; Pliny; Aldrovandi; Sir Thomas Browne; Gesner; Ray; Linnaeus;
Rondeletius; Willoughby; Green; Artedi; Sibbald; Brisson; Marten; Lacepede;
Bonneterre; Desmarest; Baron Cuvier; Frederick Cuvier; John Hunter; Owen;
Scoresby; Beale; Bennett; J. Ross Browne; the Author of Miriam Coffin;
Olmstead; and the Rev. T. Cheever. But to what ultimate generalizing purpose
all these have written, the above cited extracts will show. Of the names in
this list of whale authors, only those following Owen ever saw living whales;
and but one of them was a real professional harpooneer and whaleman. I mean
Captain Scoresby. On the separate subject of the Greenland or right-whale, he
is the best existing authority. But Scoresby knew nothing and says nothing of
the great sperm whale, compared with which the Greenland whale is almost
unworthy mentioning. And here be it said, that the Greenland whale is an
usurper upon the throne of the seas. He is not even by any means the largest
of the whales. Yet, owing to the long priority of his claims, and the profound
ignorance which, till some seventy years back, invested the then fabulous and
utterly unknown sperm-whale, and which ignorance to this present day still
reigns in all but some few scientific retreats and whale-ports; this
usurpation has been every way complete. Reference to nearly all the
leviathanic allusions in the great poets of past days, will satisfy you that
the Greenland whale, without one rival, was to them the monarch of the seas.
But the time has at last come for a new proclamation. This is Charing Cross;
hear ye! good people all, --the Greenland whale is deposed, --the great sperm
whale now reigneth! There are only two books in being which at all pretend to
put the living sperm whale before you, and at the same time, in the remotest
degree succeed in the attempt. Those books are Beale's and Bennett's; both in
their time surgeons to English South-Sea whale-ships, and both exact and
reliable men. The ..
3 original matter
touching the sperm whale to be found in their volumes is necessarily small;
but so far as it goes, it is of excellent quality, though mostly confined to
scientific description. As yet, however, the sperm whale, scientific or
poetic, lives not complete in any literature. Far above all other hunted
whales, his is an unwritten life. Now the various species of whales need some
sort of popular comprehensive classification, if only an easy outline one for
the present, hereafter to be filled in all its departments by subsequent
laborers. As no better man advances to take this matter in hand, I hereupon
offer my own poor endeavors. I promise nothing complete; because any human
thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty.
I shall not pretend to a minute anatomical description of the various species,
or-- in this place at least --to much of any description. My object here is
simply to project the draught of a systematization of cetology. I am the
architect, not the builder. But it is a ponderous task; no ordinary
letter-sorter in the Post-office is equal to it. To grope down into the bottom
of the sea after them; to have one's hands among the unspeakable foundations,
ribs, and very pelvis of the world; this is a fearful thing. What am I that I
should essay to hook the nose of this leviathan! The awful tauntings in Job
might well appal me. Will he (the leviathan) make a covenant with thee? Behold
the hope of him is vain! But I have swam through libraries and sailed through
oceans; I have had to do with whales with these visible hands; I am in
earnest; and I will try. There are some preliminaries to settle. first: the
uncertain, unsettled condition of this science of Cetology is in the very
vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters it still remains a moot
point whether a whale be a fish. In his System of Nature, A. D. , Linnaeus
declares, I hereby separate the whales from the fish. But of my own knowledge,
I know that down to the year , sharks and shad, alewives and herring, against
Linnaeus's express edict, were still found dividing the possession of the same
seas with the Leviathan. The grounds upon which Linnaeus would fain have
banished ..
4 the whales from the
waters, he states as follows: On account of their warm bilocular heart, their
lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow ears, penem intrantem feminam
mammis lactantem, and finally, ex lege naturae jure meritoque. I submitted all
this to my friends Simeon Macey and Charley Coffin, of Nantucket, both
messmates of mine in a certain voyage, and they united in the opinion that the
reasons set forth were altogether insufficient. Charley profanely hinted they
were humbug. Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old
fashioned ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back
me. This fundamental thing settled, the next point is, in what internal
respect does the whale differ from other fish. Above, Linnaeus has given you
those items. But in brief, they are these: lungs and warm blood; whereas, all
other fish are lungless and cold blooded. Next: how shall we define the whale,
by his obvious externals, so as conspicuously to label him for all time to
come? To be short, then, a whale is a spouting fish with a horizontal tail.
There you have him. However contracted, that definition is the result of
expanded meditation. A walrus spouts much like a whale, but the walrus is not
a fish, because he is amphibious. but the last term of the definition is still
more cogent, as coupled with the first. Almost any one must have noticed that
all the fish familiar to landsmen have not a flat, but a vertical, or
up-and-down tail. Whereas, among spouting fish the tail, though it may be
similarly shaped, invariably assumes a horizontal position. By the above
definition of what a whale is, I do by no means exclude from the leviathanic
brotherhood any sea creature hitherto identified with the whale by the best
informed Nantucketers; nor, on the other hand, link with it any fish hitherto
authoritatively regarded as alien. Hence, all the smaller, spouting, ..
5 and horizontal tailed
fish must be included in this ground-plan of Cetology. Now, then, come the
grand divisions of the entire whale host. First: According to magnitude I
divide the whales into three primary BOOKS (subdivisible into Chapters), and
these shall comprehend them all, both small and large. I. The FOLIO WHALE; II.
the OCTAVO WHALE; III. the DUODECIMO WHALE. As the type of the FOLIO I present
the Sperm Whale; of the OCTAVO, the Grampus; of the DUODECIMO, the Porpoise.
FOLIOS. Among these I here include the following chapters: -- I. The Sperm
Whale; II. the Right Whale; III. the Fin Back Whale; IV. the Hump-backed
Whale; V. the Razor Back Whale; VI. the Sulphur Bottom Whale. BOOK I. (
Folio), CHAPTER I. ( Sperm Whale). --This whale, among the English of old
vaguely known as the Trumpa whale, and the Physeter whale, and the Anvil
Headed whale, is the present Cachalot of the French, and the Pottsfich of the
Germans, and the Macrocephalus of the Long Words. He is, without doubt, the
largest inhabitant of the globe; the most formidable of all whales to
encounter; the most majestic in aspect; and lastly, by far the most valuable
in commerce; he being the only creature from which that valuable substance,
spermaceti, is obtained. All his peculiarities will, in many other places, be
enlarged upon. It is chiefly with his name that I now have to do.
Philologically considered, it is absurd. Some centuries ago, when the Sperm
whale was almost wholly unknown in his own proper individuality, and when his
oil was only accidentally obtained from the stranded fish; in those days
spermaceti, it would seem, was popularly supposed to be derived from a
creature identical with the one then known in England as the Greenland or
Right Whale. It was the idea also, that this same spermaceti was that
quickening humor of the Greenland Whale which the first syllable of the word
literally expresses. In those times, also, spermaceti was exceedingly scarce,
not being used for light, but only as an ointment and medicament. It was only
to be had from the druggists as you nowadays buy an ounce of rhubarb. When, as
I opine, in the course of time, the true nature of spermaceti became ..
6 known, its original
name was still retained by the dealers; no doubt to enhance its value by a
notion so strangely significant of its scarcity. And so the appellation must
at last have come to be bestowed upon the whale from which this spermaceti was
really derived. BOOK I. ( Folio), CHAPTER II. ( Right Whale).--In one respect
this is the most venerable of the leviathans, being the one first regularly
hunted by man. It yields the article commonly known as whalebone or baleen;
and the oil specially known as whale oil, an inferior article in commerce.
Among the fishermen, he is indiscriminately designated by all the following
titles: The Whale; the Greenland Whale; the Black Whale; the Great Whale; the
True Whale; the Right whale. there is a deal of obscurity concerning the
identity of the species thus multitudinously baptized. What then is the whale,
which I include in the second species of my Folios? It is the Great Mysticetus
of the English naturalists; the Greenland Whale of the English Whalemen; the
Baliene Ordinaire of the French whalemen; the Growlands Walfish of the Swedes.
It is the whale which for more than two centuries past has been hunted by the
Dutch and English in the Arctic seas; it is the whale which the American
fishermen have long pursued in the Indian ocean, on the Brazil Banks, on the
Nor' West Coast, and various other parts of the world, designated by them
Right Whale Cruising Grounds. Some pretend to see a difference between the
Greenland whale of the English and the right whale of the Americans. But they
precisely agree in all their grand features; nor has there yet been presented
a single determinate fact upon which to ground a radical distinction. It is by
endless subdivisions based upon the most inconclusive differences, that some
departments of natural history become so repellingly intricate. The right
whale will be elsewhere treated of at some length, with reference to
elucidating the sperm whale. BOOK I. ( Folio), CHAPTER III. ( Fin-Back).
--Under this head I reckon a monster which, by the various names of Fin-Back,
Tall-Spout, and Long-John, has been seen almost in every sea and is commonly
the whale whose distant jet is so often descried by passengers crossing the
Atlantic, in the New York ..
7 packet-tracks. In the
length he attains, and in his baleen, the Fin-back resembles the right whale,
but is of a less portly girth, and a lighter color, approaching to olive. His
great lips present a cable-like aspect, formed by the intertwisting, slanting
folds of large wrinkles. His grand distinguishing feature, the fin, from which
he derives his name, is often a conspicuous object. this fin is some three or
four feet long, growing vertically from the hinder part of the back, of an
angular shape, and with a very sharp pointed end. Even if not the slightest
other part of the creature be visible, this isolated fin will, at times, be
seen plainly projecting from the surface. When the sea is moderately calm, and
slightly marked with spherical ripples, and this gnomon-like fin stands up and
casts shadows upon the wrinkled surface, it may well be supposed that the
watery circle surrounding it somewhat resembles a dial, with its style and
wavy hour-lines graved on it. On that Ahaz-dial the shadow often goes back.
The Fin-Back is not gregarious. He seems a whale-hater, as some men are
man-haters. Very shy; always going solitary; unexpectedly rising to the
surface in the remotest and most sullen waters; his straight and single lofty
jet rising like a tall misanthropic spear upon a barren plain; gifted with
such wondrous power and velocity in swimming, as to defy all present pursuit
from man; this leviathan seems the banished and unconquerable Cain of his
race, bearing for his mark that style upon his back. From having the baleen in
his mouth, the Fin-Back is sometimes included with the right whale, among a
theoretic species denominated Whalebone whales, that is, whales with baleen.
Of these so called Whalebone whales, there would seem to be several varieties,
most of which, however, are little known. Broad-nosed whales and beaked
whales; pike-headed whales; bunched whales; under-jawed whales and rostrated
whales, are the fishermen's names for a few sorts. In connexion with this
appellative of Whalebone whales , it is of great importance to mention, that
however such a nomenclature may be convenient in facilitating allusions to
some kind of whales, yet it is in vain to attempt a clear classification of
the Leviathan, founded upon either his baleen, or hump, or fin, or teeth;
notwithstanding that those marked parts or features very ..
8 obviously seem better
adapted to afford the basis for a regular system of Cetology than any other
detached bodily distinctions, which the whale, in his kinds, presents. How
then? The baleen, hump, back-fin, and teeth; these are things whose
peculiarities are indiscriminately dispersed among all sorts of whales,
without any regard to what may be the nature of their structure in other and
more essential particulars. Thus, the sperm whale and the humpbacked whale,
each has a hump; but there the similitude ceases. Then, this same humpbacked
whale and the Greenland whale, each of these has baleen; but there again the
similitude ceases. And it is just the same with the other parts above
mentioned. In various sorts of whales, they form such irregular combinations;
or, in the case of any one of them detached, such an irregular isolation; as
utterly to defy all general methodization formed upon such a basis. On this
rock every one of the whale-naturalists has split. But it may possibly be
conceived that, in the internal parts of the whale, in his anatomy --there, at
least, we shall be able to hit the right classification. Nay; what thing, for
example, is there in the Greenland whale's anatomy more striking than his
baleen? Yet we have seen that by his baleen it is impossible correctly to
classify the Greenland whale. And if you descend into the bowels of the
various leviathans, why there you will not find distinctions a fiftieth part
as available to the systematizer as those external ones already enumerated.
What then remains? nothing but to take hold of the whales bodily, in their
entire liberal volume, and boldly sort them that way. And this is the
Bibliographical system here adopted; and it is the only one that can possibly
succeed, for it alone is practicable. To proceed. book i. ( folio), chapter
iv. ( hump back). --this whale is often seen on the northern American coast.
He has been frequently captured there, and towed into harbor. He has a great
pack on him like a peddler; or you might call him the Elephant and Castle
whale. At any rate, the popular name for him does not sufficiently distinguish
him, since the sperm whale also has a hump, though a smaller one. His oil is
not very valuable. He has baleen. He is the most gamesome and light-hearted of
all ..
9 the whales, making
more gay foam and white water generally than any other of them. BOOK I. (
Folio), CHAPTER V. ( Razor Back). --Of this whale little is known but his
name. I have seen him at a distance off Cape Horn. Of a retiring nature, he
eludes both hunters and philosophers. Though no coward, he has never yet shown
any part of him but his back, which rises in a long sharp ridge. Let him go. I
know little more of him, nor does anybody else. BOOK I. ( Folio), CHAPTER VI.
( Sulphur Bottom). -- Another retiring gentleman, with a brimstone belly,
doubtless got by scraping along the Tartarian tiles in some of his profounder
divings. He is seldom seen; at least I have never seen him except in the
remoter southern seas, and then always at too great a distance to study his
countenance. He is never chased; he would run away with rope-walks of line.
Prodigies are told of him. Adieu, Sulphur Bottom! I can say nothing more that
is true of ye, nor can the oldest Nantucketer. Thus ends BOOK I. ( Folio), and
now begins BOOK II. ( octavo). OCTAVOES. These embrace the whales of middling
magnitude, among which at present may be numbered: --I., the Grampus; II., the
Black Fish; III., the Narwhale; IV., the Thrasher; V., the Killer. BOOK II. (
Octavo), CHAPTER I. ( Grampus). --Though this fish, whose loud sonorous
breathing, or rather blowing, has furnished a proverb to landsmen, is so well
known a denizen of the deep, yet is he not popularly classed among whales. But
possessing all the grand distinctive features of the leviathan, most
naturalists have recognised him for one. He is of moderate octavo size,
varying from fifteen to twenty-five feet in length, and of corresponding
dimensions round the waist. He swims in herds; he is never regularly hunted,
though his oil is considerable ..
10 in quantity, and
pretty good for light. By some fishermen his approach is regarded as
premonitory of the advance of the great sperm whale. BOOK II. ( Octavo),
CHAPTER II. ( Black Fish). --I give the popular fishermen's names for all
these fish, for generally they are the best. Where any name happens to be
vague or inexpressive, I shall say so, and suggest another. I do so now,
touching the Black Fish, so called, because blackness is the rule among almost
all whales. So, call him the Hyena Whale, if you please. His voracity is well
known, and from the circumstance that the inner angles of his lips are curved
upwards, he carries an everlasting Mephistophelean grin on his face. This
whale averages some sixteen or eighteen feet in length. He is found in almost
all latitudes. He has a peculiar way of showing his dorsal hooked fin in
swimming, which looks something like a Roman nose. When not more profitably
employed, the sperm whale hunters sometimes capture the Hyena whale, to keep
up the supply of cheap oil for domestic employment --as some frugal
housekeepers, in the absence of company, and quite alone by themselves, burn
unsavory tallow instead of odorous wax. Though their blubber is very thin,
some of these whales will yield you upwards of thirty gallons of oil. BOOK II.
( Octavo), CHAPTER III. ( Narwhale), that is, Nostril whale. --Another
instance of a curiously named whale, so named I suppose from his peculiar horn
being originally mistaken for a peaked nose. The creature is some sixteen feet
in length, while its horn averages five feet, though some exceed ten, and even
attain to fifteen feet. Strictly speaking, this horn is but a lengthened tusk,
growing out from the jaw in a line a little depressed from the horizontal. But
it is only found on the sinister side, which has an ill effect, giving its
owner something analogous to the aspect of a clumsy left-handed man. What
precise purpose this ivory horn or lance answers, it would be hard to say. It
does not seemed to be used like the blade of the sword-fish and bill-fish;
though some sailors tell me that the Narwhale employs it for a rake in turning
over the bottom of the sea for food. Charley Coffin said it was used for an
ice-piercer; for the Narwhale, rising to the surface of the Polar Sea, ..
11 and finding it
sheeted with ice, thrusts his horn up, and so breaks through. But you cannot
prove either of these surmises to be correct. My own opinion is, that however
this one-sided horn may really be used by the Narwhale --however that may be
--it would certainly be very convenient to him for a folder in reading
pamphlets. The Narwhale I have heard called the Tusked whale, the Horned
whale, and the Unicorn whale. He is certainly a curious example of the
Unicornism to be found in almost every kingdom of animated nature. From
certain cloistered old authors I have gathered that this same sea-unicorn's
horn was in ancient days regarded as the great antidote against poison, and as
such, preparations of it brought immense prices. It was also distilled to a
volatile salts for fainting ladies, the same way that the horns of the male
deer are manufactured into hartshorn. Originally it was in itself accounted an
object of great curiosity. Black Letter tells me that Sir Martin Frobisher on
his return from that voyage, when Queen Bess did gallantly wave her jewelled
hand to him from a window of Greenwich Palace, as his bold ship sailed down
the Thames; when Sir Martin returned from that voyage, saith Black Letter, on
bended knees he presented to her highness a prodigious long horn of the
Narwhale, which for a long period after hung in the castle at Windsor. An
Irish author avers that the Earl of Leicester, on bended knees, did likewise
present to her highness another horn, pertaining to a land beast of the
unicorn nature. The Narwhale has a very picturesque, leopard-like look, being
of a milk-white ground color, dotted with round and oblong spots of black. His
oil is very superior, clear and fine; but there is little of it, and he is
seldom hunted. He is mostly found in the circumpolar seas. BOOK II. ( Octavo),
CHAPTER IV. ( Killer). --Of this whale little is precisely known to the
Nantucketer, and nothing at all to the professed naturalist. From what I have
seen of him at a distance, I should say that he was about the bigness of a
grampus. He is very savage --a sort of Feegee fish. He sometimes takes the
great Folio whales by the lip, and hangs there like a leech, till the mighty
brute is worried to death. The Killer is never hunted. I never heard what sort
of oil he has. Exception ..
12 might be taken to the
name bestowed upon this whale, on the ground of its indistinctness. For we are
all killers, on land and on sea; Bonapartes and Sharks included. BOOK II. (
Octavo), CHAPTER V. ( Thrasher). --This gentleman is famous for his tail,
which he uses for a ferule in thrashing his foes. He mounts the Folio whale's
back, and as he swims, he works his passage by flogging him; as some
schoolmasters get along in the world by a similar process. Still less is known
of the Thrasher than of the Killer. Both are outlaws, even in the lawless
seas. thus ends book II. ( Octavo), and begins BOOK III. ( Duodecimo).
DUODECIMOES. --These include the smaller whales. I. The Huzza Porpoise. II.
The Algerine Porpoise. III. The Mealy-mouthed Porpoise. To those who have not
chanced specially to study the subject, it may possibly seem strange, that
fishes not commonly exceeding four or five feet should be marshalled among
WHALES --a word, which, in the popular sense, always conveys an idea of
hugeness. But the creatures set down above as Duodecimoes are infallibly
whales, by the terms of my definition of what a whale is --i. e. a spouting
fish, with a horizontal tail. BOOK III. ( Duodecimo), CHAPTER I ( Huzza
Porpoise). -- This is the common porpoise found almost all over the globe. The
name is of my own bestowal; for there are more than one sort of porpoises, and
something must be done to distinguish them. I call them thus, because he
always swims in hilarious shoals, which upon the broad sea keep tossing
themselves to heaven like caps in a Fourth-of-July crowd. Their appearance is
generally hailed with delight by the mariner. Full of fine spirits, they
invariably come from the breezy billows to windward. They are the lads that
always live before the wind. They are accounted a lucky omen. If you yourself
can withstand three cheers at beholding these vivacious fish, then heaven help
ye; the spirit of godly gamesomeness is not in ye. A well-fed, plump Huzza
Porpoise will yield you one good gallon of good oil. But the fine and delicate
fluid extracted from his jaws is exceedingly valuable. It is in request among
jewellers and watchmakers. ..
13 Sailors put it on
their hones. Porpoise meat is good eating, you know. It may never have
occurred to you that a porpoise spouts. Indeed, his spout is so small that it
is not very readily discernible. But the next time you have a chance, watch
him; and you will then see the great Sperm whale himself in miniature. BOOK
III. ( Duodecimo), CHAPTER II. ( Algerine Porpoise). -- A pirate. Very savage.
He is only found, I think, in the Pacific. He is somewhat larger than the
Huzza Porpoise, but much of the same general make. Provoke him, and he will
buckle to a shark. I have lowered for him many times, but never yet saw him
captured. BOOK III. ( Duodecimo), CHAPTER III. ( Mealy-mouthed Porpoise). The
largest kind of Porpoise; and only found in the Pacific, so far as it is
known. The only English name, by which he has hitherto been designated, is
that of the fishers -- Right-Whale Porpoise, from the circumstance that he is
chiefly found in the vicinity of that Folio. In shape, he differs in some
degree from the Huzza Porpoise, being of a less rotund and jolly girth;
indeed, he is of quite a neat and gentleman-like figure. He has no fins on his
back (most other porpoises have), he has a lovely tail, and sentimental Indian
eyes of a hazel hue. But his mealy-mouth spoils all. Though his entire back
down to his side fins is of a deep sable, yet a boundary line, distinct as the
mark in a ship's hull, called the bright waist, that line streaks him from
stem to stern, with two separate colors, black above and white below. The
white comprises part of his head, and the whole of his mouth, which makes him
look as if he had just escaped from a felonious visit to a meal-bag. A most
mean and mealy aspect! His oil is much like that of the common porpoise.
Beyond the DUODECIMO, this system does not proceed, inasmuch as the Porpoise
is the smallest of the whales. Above, you have all the Leviathans of note. But
there are a rabble of uncertain, fugitive, half-fabulous whales, which, as an
American whaleman, I know by reputation, but not personally. I shall enumerate
them by their forecastle appellations; for possibly such a list may be
valuable to future investigators, who may complete what I have here but begun.
If any of the following ..
14 whales, shall
hereafter be caught and marked, then he can readily be incorporated into this
System, according to his Folio, Octavo, or Duodecimo magnitude: --The
Bottle-Nose Whale; the Junk Whale; the Pudding-Headed Whale; the Cape Whale;
the Leading Whale; the Cannon Whale; the Scragg Whale; the Coppered Whale; the
Elephant Whale; the Iceberg Whale; the Quog Whale; the Blue Whale; etc. From
Icelandic, Dutch, and old English authorities, there might be quoted other
lists of uncertain whales, blessed with all manner of uncouth names. But I
omit them as altogether obsolete; and can hardly help suspecting them for mere
sounds, full of Leviathanism, but signifying nothing. Finally: It was stated
at the outset, that this system would not be here, and at once, perfected. You
cannot but plainly see that I have kept my word. But I now leave my
cetological System standing thus unfinished, even as the great Cathedral of
Cologne was left, with the crane still standing upon the top of the
uncompleted tower. For small erections may be finished by their first
architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God
keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught --nay,
but the draught of a draught. Oh Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience! ..
15 I am aware that
down to the present time, the fish styled Lamatins and Dugongs (Pig-fish and
Sow-fish of the Coffins of Nantucket) are included by many naturalists among
the whales. But as these pig-fish are a nosy, contemptible set, mostly lurking
in the mouths of rivers, and feeding on wet hay, and especially as they do not
spout, I deny their credentials as whales; and have presented them with their
passports to quit the kingdom of Cetology. ..
16 Why this book of
whales is not denominated the Quarto is very plain. Because, while the whales
of this order, though smaller than those of the former order, nevertheless
retain a proportionate likeness to them in figure, yet the bookbinder's Quarto
volume in its diminished form does not preserve the shape of the Folio volume,
but the Octavo volume does. ..
.
|
