THE WHALE. 101 



interest. Thus a mistake in the size of the whale 

 would easily be made; and there is every proba- 

 bility of such an error having been committed two 

 or three centuries back, from which period some of 

 our present dimensions have been derived, when 

 we know that whales were usually viewed with 

 superstitious dread, and their magnitude and powers 

 in consequence, highly exaggerated. Besides, er- 

 rors of this kind having a tendency to increase, 

 rather than to correct one another, from the circum- 

 stance of each writer on the subject, being influenced 

 by a similar bias; the most gross and extravagant 

 results are at length obtained. Thus authors, we 

 find, of the first respectability in the present day, 

 give a length of 80 or 100 feet, or upwards, to the 

 mysticetus, and remark with unqualified assertion, 

 that when the captures were less frequent, and the 

 animals had sufficient time to attain their full 

 growth, specimens were found of 150 to 200 feet in 

 length, or even longer; and some ancient naturalists, 

 indeed, have gone so far, as to assert that whales 

 had been seen of above 900 feet in length. 



But whales in the present day are by no means 

 so bulky. Of 332 individuals, in the capture of 

 which, I have been personally concerned, no one 

 I believe exceeded (50 feet in length; and the largest 

 I ever measured, was 58 feet from one extremity 

 to the other, being one of the longest to appearance, 

 which I ever saw. An uncommon whale, which was 

 caught near Spitsbergen, about twenty years ago, 

 the whalebone of which measured almost fifteen feet 



