0L 



THE WHITE WHALE. 



The circumstances under which three White Whales have recently been brought 

 alive to tbis country by the enterprise of Mr. Farini, and the difficulties that 

 have been surmounted in the successful endeavour to exhibit them respectively 

 at Westminster (by pre-arrangement with Mr, Wybrow Eobertson), at Man- 

 chester, and at Blackpool, will be better understood, if, before mentioning the 

 incidents connected with their capture and voyage, I describe the preparations 

 made for the reception of the first White Whale successfully conveyed to 

 England last year under the same auspices, and the result of that experiment. 

 Knowing something of aquarium specimens and the sensational advertise- 

 ments by which their anticipated arrival is sometimes heralded, when I saw 

 in the daily papers that " a whale " was on its way from America to the Eoyal 

 Aquarium, Westminster, on board the North German Lloyd's steamer " Oder," 

 which left New York on the 16th of September, 1877, I formed no great expec- 

 tations of seeing a " monster of the deep." I thought of the laughable incident 

 so charmingly told by Mr. Buckland in his " Curiosities of Natural History," 

 of the "young, live, spouting whale," to purchase which for the Zoological 

 Gardens he and Mr. Bartlett rushed off to Blackpool some years previously; 

 and of its turning out to be " a poor little baby porpoise, about two and a half 

 feet long ;" and how my two friends '* tossed up their hats, and lay supine on 

 the shingle, and laughed at each other for five minutes that they should have 

 travelled over two hundred miles to see such a wretched creature as that; 

 showman's ' whale ' ! " 



But when I called at the Eoyal Aquarium, and Mr. Wybrow Eobertson, 

 the general manager, and Mr. Carrington, the naturalist and curator, 

 with ready courtesy showed and explained to me the preparations that 

 were being made for the reception of the American whale, I was convinced that 

 they were getting ready for the advent of an animal of considerable magnitude. 

 The clang of many hammers rang through the building with all the din of a 

 boiler-maker's " shop," and when we entered the southern annexe, overlooked 

 by the galleries of the restaurant, I came upon portable furnaces in full blast, 

 and a little army of riveters engaged in constructing in the centre of the 

 annexe an enormous vat of wrought-iron plates. As no tank in the Aquarium 

 was nearly large enough for the accommodation of the expected guest, it was 

 necessary to build one especially to contain it, and the rapidity with which 

 this was done was really marvellous. This gigantic tank is forty feet long, 

 twenty feet wide, and six feet deep, and it is calculated that it holds about 

 45,000 gallons of water, weighing 200 tons. The weight of the iron plates 

 alone is thirty tons. Thirty thousand holes had to be di-illed in them to receive 

 16.000 I'ivets, and yet this immense receptacle was commenced and finished 

 within eleven days. It is rounded at the corners, and care was taken that no 

 sharp edges or points should be left inside it which might injure the skin of 

 its intended occupant, the bottom having been covered with Portland cement. 

 Beneath it the earth was excavated to the depth of five feet, and into this 



