THE SPERM WHALE. 
83 
prising. It opens and shuts its mouth, if need be, in a twinkling, or it throws the 
lower jaw down to nearly a right angle with its body, or sways it from side to side 
at an astonishing angle, when we take into consideration the distance between the 
condyles at their junction with the animal's head. When the creature essays to 
grasp a large object on the watery it instantly rolls over to bite ; but does it necessa- 
rily follow that the same attitude must be maintained when obtaining its food in the 
abyss beneath? Or is it impossible that this protruding jaw of massive bone and 
the working of the warm sea doth it, and so it 
floats on the sea ; there was found by a souldier 
seven -eighths of a pound, and by the chief two 
pieces, weighing five pounds. If you plant the 
trees where the stream sets to the shore, then 
the stream will cast it up to great advantage ! 
March 1st, 1G72, in Batavia." (Phil. Trans., vol. 
viii, p. G133.) 
But notwithstanding the above statement, Doc- 
tor Thomas Brown, in his work published a few 
years afterward (1G86), in his description of a 
Sperm Whale which was thrown on the coast of 
Norfolk, states that "in vain it was to rake for 
ambergriese in the paunch of this leviathan, as 
Greenland discoverers, and attests of experience 
dictate, that they sometimes swallow great lumps 
thereof in the sea— insufferable fetor denying that 
inquiry ; and yet, if as Paracelsus encourageth, 
ordure makes the best musk, and from the most 
feted substances may be drawn the most odorif- 
erous essences, all that had not Vespasian's nose 
might boldly swear there was a substance for 
such extractions;" which proves that the doctor 
still susjiected that the ambergris was found in 
the Sperm Whale, although it was found by 
this animal floating in the sea, and swallowed 
by it in "great lumps!" But it was reserved 
for Doctor Boylston, of Boston, to enlighten 
mankind upon this important subject, and he 
therefore claims the discovery of its source in 
the following manner: "The most learned part 
of mankind are still at loss about many things 
even in medical use, and particularly were so 
in what is called ambergris, until our whale 
fishermen of Nantucket, in New England, some 
three or four years past made the discovery. 
Their account to me is this : Cutting up a 
spermaceti bull -whale, they found, accidentally, 
in him, about twenty pounds weight, more or 
less, of that drug; after which, they and other 
such fishermen became very curious in searching 
all such whales they killed, and it has been 
since found in lesser quantities in several male 
whales of that kind, and in no other, and that 
scarcely in one of a hundred of them. They 
add further, that it is contained in a cyst or 
bag, without any inlet or outlet to it, and that 
they have sometimes found the bag empty and 
yet entire ; the bag is nowhere to be found but 
near the genital parts of the fish. Tho amber- 
gris is when first taken out moist, and of an 
exceedingly strong and offensive smell." This 
letter was written to the Royal Society in 1724. 
(Phil. Trans., vol. xxxiii, p. 193.) 
In the same year, however, we have another 
letter from America, written to the Royal Society 
by the Honorable Paul Dudley, F. R. S., who, 
after telling us that the old Sperm Whales cany 
their young ones "on the flukes of their tails, 
who with their fins clasj> about the small, and 
hold themselves on," also says, "one of our 
country doctors tells me that the tooth of this 
fish (Sperm Whale) shaved or powdered, and 
so infused in liquor, equals the hartshorn, and 
has been used in the small -pox, and given to 
lying-in women in case of sickness, with suc- 
cess! — the quantity is as much as will lie upon 
an English shilling." Farther on in the same 
letter he states, "I meddle not here with the 
precious ambergris found in this whale, because 
I design to close the whole with that discovery." 
And here is his conclusion: "But truth," says 
he, "is the daughter of time; it is now at 
length found out, that occultum, natures is an 
animal production, and bred in the body of the 
Spermaceti Whale. I doubt not," he continues, 
"but in process of time some further particulars 
may be procured with respect to ambergris, and 
I shall be proud to transmit them ; in tho mean 
time I hope the Society will accept of this first 
essay, and allow my poor country the honor of 
discovering, or at least ascertaining, the origin 
