ZOOLOGY. — BAL^NA MYSTICETUS. 451 



it, or is seen under any circumstances which pre- 

 vent the possibility of his determining its dimen- 

 sions, his decision will certainly be in that extreme 

 which excites the most interest. Thus a mistake 

 in the size of the whale would be easily made. And 

 there is everyprobabilityof such an error havingbeen 

 committed two or three centuries back, from which 

 period some of our present dimensions have been 

 derived, when we know that whales were usually 

 viewed with superstitious dread, and their magni- 

 tude and powers, in consequence, highly exagge- 

 rated. Besides, errors of this kind having a ten- 

 dency to increase rather than to correct one another, 

 from the circumstance of each writer on the subject 

 being influenced by a similar bias, the most gross 

 and extravagant results are at length obtained. 



Thus authors, w^e find, of the first respectability 

 in the present day, give a length of 80 to 100 feet, 

 or upv/ards, to the Mysticetus, and remark, with 

 unqualified assertion, that when the captures were 

 less frequent, and the animals had sufiicient time 

 to attain their full growth, specimens were found 

 of 150 to 200 feet in length, or even longer; and 

 some ancient naturalists, indeed, have gone so far as 

 to assert, that v/hales had been seen of above 900 

 feet in length. 



But whales, in the present day, are by no means 

 so bulky. Of 322 individuals, in the capture of 

 which I have been personally concerned, no one, I 



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