第 三十二 章 · Cetology.

Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost

in its unshored, harbourless 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. 1820.

“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. 1839.

“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 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; Linnæus; Rondeletius; Willoughby; Green; Artedi; Sibbald; Brisson;

Marten; Lacépède; 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 or 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 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. 1776, Linnæus declares, “I hereby separate the whales from

the fish.” But of my own knowledge, I know that down to the year 1850,

sharks and shad, alewives and herring, against Linnæus’s express edict,

were still found dividing the possession of the same seas with the

Leviathan.

The grounds upon which Linnæus would fain have banished 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 naturæ 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, Linnæus 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, and horizontal tailed fish

must be included in this ground-plan of Cetology. Now, then, come the

grand divisions of the entire whale host.

*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 noisy, 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.

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 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 baptised. 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

Baleine 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 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 colour, 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 connection 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 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 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

present may be numbered:—I., the _Grampus_; II., the _Black Fish_;

III., the _Narwhale_; IV., the _Thrasher_; V., the _Killer_.

*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 dimensioned form

does not preserve the shape of the Folio volume, but the Octavo volume

does.

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 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 seem 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, 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 colour, 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 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 1. (_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 him 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. 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 colours, 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

fore-castle 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 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!