THE HUNTING OF WHALES 109 



on the Thames and Grenewich, which drew an infinite 

 concourse to see it, by water, horse, coach, and on 

 foot, from London and all parts. It appeared first 

 below Greenewich at low water, for at high water it 

 would have destroyed all the boates, but lying now 

 in shallow water incompassed with boates, after a 

 long conflict it was kill'd with a harping yron, struck 

 in the head, out of which spouted blood and water 

 by two tunnells, and after an horrid grone it ran 

 quite on shore and died. Its length was 58 foot, 

 heighth 16 ; black skinn'd like coach leather, very 

 small eyes, greate taile, onely two small finns, a 

 picked snout, and a mouth so wide that divers men 

 might have stood upright in it ; no teeth, but sucked 

 slime onely as thro' a grate of that bone which we 

 call whalebone, the throate yet so narrow as would 

 not have admitted the least of fishes. The extreames 

 of the cetaceous bones hang downewards from the 

 upper jaw, and was hairy towards the ends and bottom 

 within side ; all of it prodigious, but in nothing more 

 wonderfull than that an animal of so great a bulk 

 should be nourished only by slime thro' those grates." 



In Holinshed's Chronicle we read that in 1531 

 "the five and twentieth of Maie, between London 

 and Gravesende were taken two great fishes called 

 whorlepooles, male and female." These were pre- 

 sumably either Balcenoptera, or perhaps more likely 

 Sperm whales. The expression " whorlepoole" for 

 large whales was very common at that period. 



Earlier still, and also in the Thames, we hear 



