THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN. 



cies he classified, he could vouch for the accuracy and exist- 

 ence of not more than fifty. And what whaleman would 

 venture to elect which has taken the widest departure from 

 reality in the delineation of the Greenland whale the learn- 

 ed Frenchman, Lacepedas, or the experienced English whale- 

 man, Scoresby? Lesson sounded deep in this fog-bank, and 

 in despair he wrote : " What an impenetrable veil covers our 

 knowledge of cetacea! Groping in the dark, we advance in 

 a field strewn with thorns." As a humble groper in this 

 thorny path, as one of the twenty " thousand mariners who " 

 to-day "capture and cut up whales," I present simple out- 

 lines of the form of the sperm-whale, remarking that the fig- 

 ures have been examined and approved by a number of our 

 old and experienced whaling captains approved so far as a 

 representation of such immense dimensions could be render- 

 ed in so small a figure. 



Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 give a view of the sperm-whale, as seen 

 with the belly and back uppermost respectively. Fig. 3 is 

 a side-view, and in such a position as the whale is generally 

 represented. It is this view which has conveyed the erro- 

 neous idea that the sperm-whale is a clumsy, illy-proportioned 

 animal, one obviously incapable of the feats of speed and ac- 

 tivity which whalemen ascribe to it. Remember that the 

 motion of the whale's tail is up and down, and that it is the 

 upward blow which elevates the great head above the sur- 

 face and impels his great bulk forward. And see how ad- 

 mirably adapted is his form for the most direct application 

 of his enormous power ! A line drawn from the hump to 

 the root of the tail is the line : on which his powerful muscles 

 act to give this upward blow. Then look at the clean-cut 

 run of these same parts, as shown in Figs. 1 and 2, with his 

 broad fins placed at the point of greatest width to balance, 

 guide, and aid him in turning or quickly rolling in the water. 

 In Fig. 2 the dotted lines converge to the position of the 



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