THE ORDER CETACEA. 25 



The opening of the whale's mouth, laterally is serpen- 

 tine : the lips are about twenty or twenty-two feet long, 

 and display, when open, a cavity sufficiently large to afford 

 a reception to a ship's large jolly-boat and her crew. 

 H. L. Duhamel-du-Monceau, the celebrated chemist, 

 relates, that a whale which was captured in the Bay of 

 Sonsure, in 17-6, seventy feet long, had a mouth so 



pearance, as related by Sir Arthur de Capell Brooke, in his " Travels to the 

 North Cape," may not be deemed uninteresting by the reader ; he observes, 

 " Nothing can be more surprising and beautiful than the singular clear- 

 ness of the water of the Northern Seas. As we passed slowly over the 

 surface, the bottom, which was in general a white sand, was clearly 

 visible, with its minutest objects, where the depth was from twenty to 

 twenty-five fathoms. During the whole course of the tour I made, nothing 

 appeared to me so extraordinary as the inmost recesses of the deep thus 

 unveiled to the eye. The surface of the ocean was unruffled by the 

 slightest breeze, and the gentle splashing of the oars scarcely disturbed 

 it. Hanging over the gunwale of the boat witli wonder and delight, I 

 gazed on the slowly moving scene below. Where the bottom was sandy, 

 the different kinds of Asterice and Echini, and even the smallest shells, 

 appeared at that great depth conspicuous to the eye ; and the water seemed 

 in some measure to have the effect of a magnifier, by enlarging the objects, 

 like a telescope, and bringing them nearer. Now creeping along, we saw, 

 far beneath, the rugged sides of a mountain rising towards our boat, the 

 base of which perhaps was hidden some miles in the great depth below. 

 Though moving on a level surface, it seemed almost as if we were as- 

 cending the height under us ; and when we passed over its summit, which 

 rose in appearance to within a few feet of our boat, and came again to the 

 descent, which on this side was suddenly perpendicular, and overlooking 

 a watery gulf, as we pushed gently over the last part of it, it seemed al- 

 most as if we had thrown ourselves down this precipice ; the illusion, from 

 the crystal clearness of the deep, actually producing a sudden start. Now 

 we came again to a plain, and passed slowly over the submarine forests and 

 meadows which appeared in the expanse below, inhabited, doubtless, by 

 thousands of animals unknown to man ; and I could sometimes observe 

 large fishes of a singular shape gliding softly through the watery thickets, 

 unconscious of what was moving above them. As we proceeded, the 

 bottom became no longer visible ; its fairy scenes gradually faded to the 

 view, and were lost in the dark green depths of the ocean." Page 197. 



