HIMSELF 5 



that are characteristic of the entire family. Unlike the whale- 

 bone whales, he has a throat large enough, it is said, to swallow 

 a man — hence the story of Jonah. He is commonly social, 

 though there are occasional solitary bulls who appear to be 

 natural misanthropes or to have been driven out of the herd and, 

 in either case, with just such temperamental difficulties as one 

 might expect. He is found in all tropical and subtropical seas, 

 and now and then in northern waters, feeding rarely on fish 

 but mainly on squid. It has erroneously been thought that it 

 was this latter food that sometimes worked his ruin: that from 

 squid he contracted a disease of the intestines, a sort of 

 secretion around the beaks of the squid, which thickens and 

 accumulates steadily as the whale sickens and perhaps dies 

 from its effects. 



This accumulation, greasy and rather soft, and with a dis- 

 agreable odour when first it is taken from the whale, is ambergris. 

 Upon exposure it soon hardens and the disagreeable odour is 

 succeeded by a sweet and earthy smell; it is then used as a ve- 

 hicle for perfume, in the manufacture of perfumery, and is very 

 valuable, the black ambergris being worth twelve dollars and a 

 half the ounce and the superior gray ambergris worth twenty 

 dollars. It has served, or been thought to serve, other pur- 

 poses, medicinal and magical, though apparently with no great 

 success, for these uses have long since been discarded. Many 

 ingenious guesses have been made as to its origin, none more 

 amusing than that found in a manuscript discovered in the 17th 

 Century on board a Dutch vessel, stating that ambergris, *' issues 

 out of the root of a tree, which tree howsoever it stands on the 

 land, alwaies shoots forth its roots towards the sea, seeking 

 the warmth of it, thereby to deliver the fattest gum that comes 

 out of it, which tree otherwise by its copious fatness might be 

 burnt and destroyed." The explanation commonly offered, 

 that the disease which creates ambergris is caused by the squid 

 diet, suggests the once fashionable theory that grape seeds were 

 the primary cause of appendicitis — and is as incorrect. All 

 whales eat squid, but very few whales yield ambergris in any 

 quantity, large or small, and never did any sane man go whaling 



