THE IMPENETRABLE SEA 



smell. It is used for making candles of standard photo- 

 metric value — that is, for comparing the illuminating 

 power of artificial lights — in the dressing of fabrics, in 

 medicine and surgery (particularly in the making of 

 ointments) and in cosmetic preparations. 



Ambergris is a fatty gummy substance, the origin of 

 which was once much in doubt. It is usually found in 

 lumps, floating on the sea or cast up on the world's 

 shores. Much of it comes from the coasts of the Bahama 

 Islands, but it is also brought from the East Indies and 

 the coasts of Africa, Brazil, China and Japan. It gener- 

 ally contains black spots, which appear to be caused by 

 the presence of tiny beaks of the cuttle-fish Sepia octopodia, 

 the principal food of the spermaceti whale. 



Some odd stories were told by the ancients regarding 

 the origin of ambergris. One ancient speculator on the 

 subject, Klobius, recites no fewer than eighteen theories. 

 Paludanus and Linschotten described it as a kind of 

 bitumen, which worked its way up through the waters 

 from the bed of the sea. They did not suspect any con- 

 nection with the whale, nor did numbers of other writers 

 seeking an explanation. 



Some writers believed it to be the excrement of a bird, 

 named by the inhabitants of the Maldive Islands the 

 Anacangrispasqui, which had been melted by the sun's 

 heat, washed off the shore by the waves, and swallowed 

 by whales, who returned it to the sea as ambergris. 

 Others, particularly the orientals, imagined that it sprang 

 from the sea-beds in fountains. Others declared it to be a 

 sea-mushroom, torn from the bottom of the sea by 

 tempests. Others affirmed it to be a vegetable product 

 discharged into the sea by trees which had their roots 

 turned towards the water. Others again maintained that 

 it was formed from the honeycombs of bees which had 

 their nests among rocks of the shore. 



At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Mr. 

 Neumann, chemist to the King of Prussia, investigated 



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