60 THE WHALEMAN'S ADVENTURES. 



these seas, once rigged swivels in the heads of 

 his boats, and had bladders and other gear to 

 float dead whales ; but he succeeded with it all 

 so poorly, that, in mortification and despair, 

 when he put into one of the ports of New Zea- 

 land, he went out into the woods and shot 

 himself with a brace of pistols through both 

 his eyes. I think some quick-witted Yankee 

 would do better to give his attention to experi- 

 menting in this line ; and, even if the whales 

 would not be killed or floated, he would not be 

 such a fool as to blow his own brains out. It 

 is a true saying of Massinger : 



" Who kills himself to avoid misery, fears it, 

 And at the best shows a bastard valour ; 



which, forasmuch as the crime is becoming 



of the temperate and torrid zones ; and Dr. Marcet has con- 

 cluded, from numerous specimens of sea-water examined, 

 that the mean specific gravity of the equatorial seas is 1-02777. 

 But this density, though greater by 0-0013 than that of the 

 north polar seas at the temperature of 60, would be less by 

 0-0025 than the latter, if compared at their actual existing 

 temperatures. This difference would yield a diminished power 

 of notation after death of about 300 pounds in a full-grown 

 whale in seas of the tropical temperatures, probably sufficient 

 to account for the greater proportion of whales sinking in 

 those regions than in those of a perpetually freezing tempera- 

 ture. ED. 



