SPERM WHALES AND BOTTLE-NOSED WHALES 265 



the whale's body ambergris is found floating in the sea or cast 

 up on the sea-shore. From the earliest times it has been 

 greatly valued, chiefly for the medicinal qualities attributed 

 to it, but in recent times it has been used almost exclusively 

 as a vehicle for retaining the fragrance of the more expensive 

 perfumes. 



Robert Burton (1576-1639), in his ' Anatomy of Melancholy ', 

 in the section treating of "Alternatives and Cordials, corro- 

 borating resolving the Reliques, and mending the Tempera- 

 ment ", states : "After a purge, 3 or 4 grains of Bezoar stone, 

 and 3 grains of Ambergrease drunk, or taken in Borage, or 

 Bugloss water, in which gold hot hath been quenched, 

 will do much good, and the purge shall diminish less (the 

 heart so refreshed) of the strength and substance of the 

 body." 



A mass of ambergris, 400 pounds in weight, was found at 

 St. Helena in the year 1716, and Burn Murdoch, in ' Whaling 

 and Bear Hunting', says : "Some years ago Norwegians found 

 420 kilos in a Sperm on the Australian coast ■ this was valued 

 at £27,000." Usually, however, the pieces of ambergris which 

 are found are very much smaller, ranging upwards from a few 

 ounces in weight. 



The following properties help to distinguish this substance : 

 It melts at 6o° Centigrade and burns with a pale blue flame ; 

 it is soluble in absolute alcohol, ether, in fat or in volatile oils ; 

 the alcohol solution is fluorescent in sunlight, with, a charac- 

 teristic yellow-green rim on the surface of the solution. When 

 heated it gives off an agreeable odour, melts without bubbles 

 or scum, and on the heated point of a knife vaporizes completely 

 away. 



The economic importance of sperm oil in the eighteenth and 

 nineteenth centuries put the Sperm WTiale for a time in the 

 forefront of commercially valuable Cetacea. The development 

 and operation of the Sperm Whale fishery was mainly in the 

 hands of American whalers and, according to Harmer's 

 ' History of Whaling', to which I am indebted for many of the 

 facts given here, it commenced on the New England coast 

 about 1712. By 1770 the fleet had grown to 125 vessels 

 fishing in an area which included the banks of Newfoundland, 

 the Brazilian coast, the West Indies and, to the east, the Cape 



