PHYSIOLOGY OF THE WHALE. 56 



How, then, with such a prodigious current 

 of blood constantly flowing and needing oxygen- 

 ization by the air, the whale can remain under 

 water so long, (respiration being sometimes 

 suspended in the case of a sperm whale, an 

 hour and a half), it was difficult to conceive, 

 until dissection discovered that in the cetaceous 

 animals, the arterial blood, instead of passing 

 into the venous circulation, the ordinary way, 

 had provided for it, by Creative wisdom, a 

 structure which is nothing less than a grand 

 reservoir for the reception of a quantity of 

 arterial blood, which, as occasion requires, is 

 emptied into the general circulation, and thus 

 for a time supersedes the necessity of respira- 

 tion. Tt may be that the accidental piercing, 

 now and then, of the walls of this reservoir of 

 arterial blood, by the harpoon or lance, has 

 something to do with the whale's occasional 

 sinking after being killed, a circumstance not 

 atisfactorily explained. 



Until within a few years this gigantic game 

 has been so abundant in the general ocean, 

 that whalemen have used no special means to 



