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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.

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of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men,

and mastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving

panoramas of empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe,

not excluding its suburbs.  Such, and so magnifying, is the

virtue of a large and liberal theme!  We expand to its bulk.

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.

No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea,

though many there be who have tried it.



Ere entering upon the subject of Fossil Whales, I present my

credentials as a geologist, by stating that in my miscellaneous

time I have been a stone-mason, and also a great digger of ditches,

canals and wells, wine-vaults, cellars, and cisterns of all sorts.

Likewise, by way of preliminary, I desire to remind the reader,

that while in the earlier geological strata there are found the fossils

of monsters now almost completely extinct; the subsequent relics

discovered in what are called the Tertiary formations seem the connecting,

or at any rate intercepted links, between the antichronical creatures,

and those whose remote posterity are said to have entered the Ark;

all the Fossil Whales hitherto discovered belong to the Tertiary period,

which is the last preceding the superficial formations.  And though