THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN. 267 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



New Theory of the Flight of Birds. The Bird a Balloon. Adventure with 

 a Shark, and a Man in Danger. Questioning Darwinian Theory. 

 Grinding Crow-bars to Sail-needles. A Gam of Whales, and five killed. 

 A Ten-barrel Whale and Boat stove. Death boards us. A sad and 

 suffering Death-bed. Lowered for Whales. A dead Shipmate, and Re- 

 spect for a dead Body. Funeral at Sea, Sperm-whales attending. In 

 a Region of small Whales. Pets of the Ship, Cats; Monkey, and his 

 Love of Eggs. 



THE hawk and I talked this matter over at the mast-head ; 

 and these are some of the suggestions it made : If the e^i- 

 larged bones be filled with air, then the buoyancy of the 

 body is not increased, for the air -filled space simply dis- 

 places an element of equal density. The buoyancy of a fish 

 is made greater by a bladder of air, in which a lighter dis- 

 places a heavier element. The caverns in the bones have a 

 purpose, however, as have the cellular structure of tjie shafts 

 and the plumelets, and the great cavities of the body. At 

 length a thought came in explanation of the wonderful 

 power of suspension. As fish are endowed with a power to 

 supply their sound-bladders with air from the water, may 

 not my companion- be able to command an element much 

 less in specific gravity than the air it displaces? Such an 

 element is hydrogen, an element found in its food, as air is 

 found in water for the purposes of the fish. And it is not 

 a whit more surprising if the bird has power to assimilate 

 the one, than it is that the fish has power to procure the 

 other. Considering this bird as a balloon filled with h}'- 

 drogen, with muscular powers of dilation and compression, 

 the phenomenon of its soaring flight is less a mystery ; for 



