WHALES. 241 



favourite pursuit, I wonder that with your 

 passion for the amusement of angling, you 

 have never made an expedition in one of 

 our whalers — with Captain Scoresby for in- 

 stance : you would then have engaged in a 

 sport of a new kind. 



Hal. — I should like much to see a whale 

 taken, but I do not think the sight worth 

 the dangers and privations of such a voyage. 

 It would only be an amusing sight and not 

 an enterprize, unless indeed you yourself 

 employed the harpoon ; and after all it must 

 be a tedious operation, that of watching the 

 sinking and rising of a fish obedient to a 

 natural instinct, which in this instance is 

 the cause of his death. 



Poiet. — How? 



Hal. — The whale, having no air bladder, 

 can sink to the lowest depths of the ocean, 

 and mistaking the harpoon for the teeth of 

 a sword fish or a shark, he instantly de- 

 scends, this being his manner of freeing 

 himself from these enemies, who cannot 

 bear the pressure of a deep ocean, and from 

 ascending and descending in small space, lie 



R 



