372 SEASIDE DIVINITY. 



the whale. This skin consists of a mass of fibres 

 interlacing each other, as in ordinary skin ; but 

 the texture is much more loose and open, and thus 

 affords room for the fatty matter, or oil, deposited 

 in it, and varying in thickness from that of several 

 inches to between one and two feet. The integu- 

 ment, or skin, thus thickened is adapted in such 

 a manner to the requirements of the animal as to 

 excite the utmost admiration. 



The skin is, as already stated, not only open in 

 its texture, and of great thickness, but it is filled 

 with a substance the specific gravity of which is 

 considerably less than that of sea water. This 

 substance envelops the whole body of the animal, 

 and serves the important purpose of rendering 

 buoyant a fabric so huge, of which even the bones 

 are of very great weight compared with those of 

 fishes. 



But this skin, so peculiar in its structure, per- 

 forms another office. It is an extremely bad con- 

 ductor of heat, inasmuch as there is no circulation 

 among the particles of which the deposited oil is 

 composed. Hence the animal heat of these warm- 

 blooded animals is not transferred to the sur- 

 rounding waters, or, which is the same thing, the 

 external cold cannot penetrate. By this means 

 the whale can with perfect safety inhabit the 

 coldest water. This arrangement of its skin is 

 necessary to its existence, because of its being a 

 warm-blooded animal ; if, on the other hand, the 

 whale possessed cold blood, like a fish, such a 



