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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,

Linnaeus 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 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

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 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 Humpbacked 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 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