1826.] [ 387 ] 



IS THE WHALE A FISH, AND ARE LAND BEAKS OF WATER 



ORIGINAL? 



A QUESTION, as to the really genuine pretension of the Whule to the 

 name o^ Jish, has recently been raised and tried, as appears by the 

 public papers, in New York, upon occasion of the attempt, upon tlie 

 part of certain dealers in Jisji-oil, to escape payment of the duty 

 imposed upon that article of commerce, in respect of the oil of the 

 W^ale, upon the ground. That the Whale is not ajish. 



Of the legal acceptation of the term ^fish, as including the animals 

 called Whales, there could be little occasion to doubt ; and, in this view 

 alone, it might seem that a court of law must necessarily hold the 

 affirmative. The point was disputed, however, upon the basis of phy- 

 siology and natural history ; and an eminent naturalist of New York 

 (probably Dr. Mitchell) was called to support the defendant's case under 

 that aspect. Not content with this, however, a scriptural ground was 

 taken by the same party in the suit. It was said, that the creation of 

 Jtshes was spoken of, in Genesis, in addition to the creation of Whales ; 

 and that, consequently, in the view of the sacred writer, Whales are not 

 Jlskes. Both natural history and scripture history appear to have 

 been listened to by the court; but, in the appeal to the latter, the 

 defendant was unfortunate. A more precise elucidation of the scrip- 

 tural arrangement of Whales was referred to ; the animal, which 

 the Old Testament describes as swallowing Jonah, is, in that book, 

 called a Whale ; and, in the New Testament, the same animal, in re- 

 ference to the same history, is called a fish. The decision, therefore, 

 was in favour of the Collector of the Customs ! 



That a Whale is a fish, is certainly the understanding of the law, of 

 scripture, of the world at large ; insomuch, that there will probably be 

 no need of an Act of Parliament to constitute and declare the Whale, 

 as for the purposes of the revenue, a Jish, all natural history to the 

 contrary notwithstanding; similarly to the Act which, for certain national 

 purposes, makes Malta an island of Europe, in the teeth of every 

 geographical dictum ! " All the beasts in the field, all the birds in the 

 air, aiid all the Jishes in the sea," are three popular and universal prin- 

 cipal subdivisions of the animal kingdom, in which the reference is 

 rather made to the element inhabited, than to the particular structure 

 of the animal; and, if this sentence were once set aside, we should 

 probably tind, that beside having no JVhale-oil for Jish-oil, we should 

 have no Jish-oil whatever ; the animals which are called ^\^lales being 

 nearly those alone which nature has supplied with oil, to the real ex- 

 clusion of t\\e fishes ; and our situation being not at all mended if we take 

 in Seal-oil, the claim of the seal, to the name of Jish, being even still 

 less supportable than that of the Whale I 



But, this question, at once scientific, legal, and commercial, as to the 

 piscine character of Wliale-oil, having once been raised, and its repeti- 

 tion in a court of law in England, and still more, its discussion as a 

 matter of argument and curiosity, being possible and probable — it may 

 amuse some readers, and instruct others, to draw together a few of 

 those particulars which render certain the physiological or natural history 

 a separation of the Whale from the kingdom of fishes ; since, as under 

 every other aspect, it certainly belongs to it. 



3 D 2 



