WHALES. 415 
Museum of the Faculty, in Paris, there is a vertical section of the 
aorta, one of the large blood vessels of a whale; it is so immense 
that a child might pass through the pipe, which is eighteen inches 
in diameter, the walls being two inches thick. What an enormous 
column of blood must this vast channel have conveyed. 
The weight of the brain of a whale is scarcely the twenty-five 
thousandth part of his total weight. Though endowed with tre- 
mendous strength, this animal is very timid; and when pursued, he 
invariably tries to escape and will not fight. He has many 
tormentors, from which he cannot always escape, or even defend 
himself. Sword-fish pierce him, and porpoises tear away large 
pieces of his flesh. 
The diameter of the eye is equal to the one hundred and 
ninety-second ‘part of the total length. Professor Carus compares 
the whole volume of the ocular globe to an orange, and Dr. Gros, 
to the head of a new-born child. The pupil is transversal, and oval 
like that of a ruminating animal. Though these immense mammi- 
ferous fish have no legs, they swim with great swiftness, and they 
gambol in the mountains of water lashed up by the storms. They 
use their two arms admirably, as fins, or oars, and their enormous 
tail, which is composed of two great lobes, is a tremendous power 
to propel them through the water. Accordingly, when the whalers 
wish to lessen the speed of a whale which they have harpooned, 
they aim all their blows at the tail; with a very sharp triangular 
pike they inflict sometimes as many as fifty vigorous slashes in 
the root of the tail, and thus lessen by one half, the speed of the 
retreating animal. When the whale strikes the water with its tail, 
it causes a loud clapping. 
A whale is said to swim on an average ten miles an hour; but 
when pursued or wounded, he moves much more swiftly. Some- 
times he will lift himself entirely out of the water, and fall down 
violently, thus producing a miniature waterquake—if we may be 
allowed to coin a word—which may be felt at a considerable 
distance. 
Whales are not insensible to affection; the male always accom- 
panies his mate. In 1723, a pair were met travelling through the 
