158 HAUPT— JONAH'S WHALE. [April 20, 



grev, nearly black on the upper parts, and lighter beneath. The 

 ancient Assyrian sculptors might have imitated this by the use 

 of dark grey and light grey dolerites, or light dolerite and dark 

 anamesite. In the reports of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft the 

 stone is called Basalt lava. This is very indefinite : any kind of 

 basalt might be called basalt lava; all the rocks of the basalt family 

 are of eruptive origin. 



The basalt cachalots of Kileh Shergat are probably very large. 

 The giant sperm-whale attains a length of about icxd feet, with a 

 girth of 40 feet. The Arabic name of the sperm-whale ^| is 'amhar 

 (for 'anhar, 'ahhar) which means passing through the zvater; Heb. 

 'over yam (Is. xxiii, 2) means seafaring, passing over the sea. 

 'Anhar is also the name of the fragrant substance which we call 

 ambergris, i. e., grey amber, in distinction from yellow amber 

 (French ambre jaune, German Berustein, i. e., lapis ardensY and 

 zvhite amber, i. e., spermaceti. While a pound of (purified) sperma- 

 ceti is worth about 30 cents, grey ambergris is worth about $35.00 

 per oz. at present;^ this (wholesale) price is subject to considerable 

 variation. The use of ambergris in perfumery is decreasing. Am- 

 bergris is a morbid concretion from the alimentary tract of the sperm- 

 whale, like the bezoar^ found in the stomach and intestines of cer- 

 tain animals, especially the wild goat, Capra ^gagrus, known as the 

 bezoar goat, which is found chiefly in the mountains of the Caucasus 

 and Persia. The fragrance of ambergris is said to be due to a bac- 

 terium, the spirillum recti physeteris. Ambergris is usually found 

 floating on the surface of the ocean or cast upon the shore in 

 regions frequented by sperm-whales, sometimes in masses from 60 

 to 215 pounds in weight. The sperm-whale is most abundant off 

 New Zealand, in the Sulu Sea, about the Cape Verde Islands, and 

 in the Indian Ocean. Roughly speaking we may say that the 

 cachalot is found chiefly betweet lat. 40° N. and 60° S. The 



^ See Hommel,i9/V Namen der Sdngethiere bci den siidseniitischen 

 Volkcni (Leipzig, 1879) pp. 393 and 447. 



2 See my remarks in the American Journal of Semitic Languages, Vol. 

 XXIIL, p. 242, 1. 5. 



2 Black ambergris is cheaper: the wholesale price is $20.00 per oz. at 

 present. 



* Bezoar is a corruption of the Persian padzdJir (Arab, badicahr) a com- 

 pound of pad, expelling, and zahr, poison. 



