MAMMALIA. 415 



This remarkable structure has another use ; it acts like a 

 blanket, and, being a bad conductor of caloric, prevents the 

 animal heat from being dissipated, thus enabling these warm- 

 blooded inhabitants of the sea to resist the cold of the medium 

 in which they live. Xor does its utility stop even here ; it is 

 specifically hghter than the sea-water, and though its weight 

 sometimes exceeds thirty tons, it does not act as an incum- 

 brance, but in reality renders the animal more buoyant. 



Thus provided, the llorqual, of ninety or a hundred feet in 

 length, the largest of all Whales, and consequently of all ex- 

 isting animals, can propel its enormous bulk through the water, 

 or float at ease upon the surface. To such a being how ap- 

 jiropriate and how beautiful are the words of Milton : — 

 " That sea-beast. 



Leviathan, which God of all his works 

 Created hugest that swim the ocean stream : 

 Ilim, haply, slumbering on the Nonvay foam, 

 Tlie pilot of some small night founder'd skiff. 

 Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, 

 With fixed anchor in his scaly* rind, 

 floors by his side under the lee, while night 

 Invests the sea, and wished mom delays." 



Paradise Lost, Book 1 



met with this extract, we had an opportunity of examining a Hyperoodoa 

 or Bottle-head Whale, taken in Belfast Bay. One of the captors had 

 inflicted a wound on the back with a hatchet, and the dark skin and light 

 coloured blubber underneath we could compare to nothing but a newly-cut 

 cake of caoutchouc. In firmness and elasticity, when pressed by the finger, 

 the resemblance seemed not less perfect, 



• It is almost needless to say that the skin is not "scaly." In the 

 works of Gesner, 1588, there is the figure of a vessel anchored to a Whale; 

 so that the poet has given expression to what was at one time the current 

 belief. 



