402 THE WORLD. OF THE SEA. 
= 
operation carried on amid songs and bumpers of spirits. The 
first thing is to take from the body the large rolls of fat in which 
it is enveloped ; these are melted in huge copper vats. The oil 
or fat is then extracted from the body, and especially from the 
head, where it is gathered up with pails. The oil from the cephalic 
region is the thickest, and alone forms one-third of the total pro- 
duce. When all is extracted from the body, it is severed from 
the head, and abandoned to the birds and sharks. The head 
only is hoisted on to the deck, where it is soon stripped of its fat. 
This can only be effected with animals of a moderate size. The 
cutting up, boiling, and preparing, occupies from twenty to thirty 
men for forty-eight hours. When purified, the oil is put into tuns. 
One sperm-whale will furnish from 80 to 150 tuns of oil, according 
A TOOTH OF THE SPERM-WHALE. 
to its size. One sixty feet long, and weighing sixty tons, was 
found to yield 100 barrels. More than this is seldom obtained 
from any single whale. A three-masted vessel can take about fifty 
whales, which may be caught in the space of one or two years. 
This fishery is carried on in the present day by the English, 
French, Portuguese, and Americans. 
The sperm-whale furnishes for art and commerce not oil only, 
but also ivory, spermaceti, and ambergris. Ivory is obtained from 
the teeth, but is of inferior quality. The lower jaw has on,either 
side, from twenty to five-and-twenty large teeth, they are cylin- 
drical, and conical at the summit, slightly curved inwards, sharp, 
and not closely set in the jaw. We have seen one that was seven 
inches in length, and another that weighed more than thirty-one 
pounds. Spermaceti is found in the large cavities in the upper 
part of the head, beneath the brain, which is small, compared 
