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or peduncle of the lobes, is of a conical shape.'thc 

 lobes are very broad, twenty feet from tip to tip in a 

 large specimen, and furnished with muscles of great 

 and varied power. The terminal outline of the tail 

 is a double curve ; the one lobe being convex and 

 the other concave. This form no doubt assists in 

 some of the many motions of which the tail is capa- 

 ble. These are of all kinds, direct flexures and 

 oblique twists ; so that, though the one is an instru- 

 ment of prehension and the other one of propulsion, 

 the proboscis of the elephant is probably not a finer 

 instance of muscular combination than the tail of the 

 whale. 



The whale's tail is the most powerful animal organ 

 of which we have any knowledge ; and in the com- 

 mon whale it is more powerful than in any of the 

 other species. Other than the involuntary muscles 

 which carry on the living functions, and the local 

 ones which move the swimming paws, the lower jaw, 

 and the eyes, and act in the operation of blowing, the 

 whole mass of muscle, and the whole power of the 

 spine of the common whale, are concentrated in the 

 tail, which may be said to be its only weapon of 

 defence as well as its chief organ of motion. In its 

 ordinary habits, the common whale offers no violence 

 to any animal, not even to the small ones upon which 

 it feeds. It does not, in any way, bite, or lacerate, or 

 crush : the current of water simply carries the food 

 to the throat, and it is swallowed. An animal of this 

 habit, could not, consistently with its nature, be the 

 aggressor ; but the whale has many enemies, of vari- 

 ous sizes and degrees of strength, from the largest 

 of the toothed whales to the dolphins, and some 

 species of fish properly so called ; and as it is not 

 the regular fond of any of these, it becomes necessary 

 that it should be able to resist their attacks. Its 

 defence consists in the blow of the tail, which, accord- 

 ing to the published accounts, is more powerful than 

 that of the toothed whales of the same size. We 

 have not, on land, any thing but miniatures of it ; 

 because we have neither the same mass nor the same 

 concentration of muscular action. Perhaps the nearest 

 resemblance to it are the kicks of the kangaroo and 

 the giraffe, the first of which, when it takes effect, 

 is said to kill the dingo, or Australian dog, upon the 

 spot, and the second to fracture the skull, or even 

 to cripple the paws of the lion. The stroke of the 

 whale's tail, which is firm and cartilaginous, can cut 

 a stout boat in two, or dash it many fathoms under 

 water, according to the way in which it takes effect ; 

 and as it is probable that it cannot strike a boat with 

 the same force as it can an animal in the water, the 

 well-aimed blow seems enough to stun every crea- 

 ture which inhabits there. 



The usual colour of the whale, on the upper part, is 

 shining black ; the under part forwards, and partly 

 the lower lip, are pure white ; and the under part 

 toward the tail, slate or lead colour. The white colour 

 extends as far backwards as the vital parts, and no 

 doubt co-operates with the mass of subcuticular blub- 

 ber or fat, in preserving the temperature of the animal 

 immersed as the lower part of it is in the cold water 

 resulting from melted ice. The upper part is no 

 doubt also protected by the blubber; but the black 

 colour forms another ground of argument in favour 

 of its migration, it being doubtful whether a nakec 

 black sYm could, under any circumstances, bear an 

 exposure for months, or even for weeks, to a tempe- 

 rature of the air as low as that of freezing. The 



>laccs in the middle latitudes, where the common 

 whales have been said to have been most frequently 

 seen, are those which point at the fact of its migra- 

 tions by speedy journeys over those parts of its 

 ange in latitude which supply no food, or compa- 

 atively little. They are usually the offings of large 

 ivers, or the return eddies of large bays, both being 

 situations where we may suppose the return water 

 nuch charged with the smaller productions of life, 

 :he estuary of the St. Lawrence, the Gulf of Guinea, 

 the offing of the Red Sea, about Socotora, and that of 

 the Bay of Bengal, about Ceylon. 



As is very generally the case when the female has 

 either to defend her offspring from powerful enemies, 

 or to find food for a voracious progeny, the female whale 

 s said to be larger than the male. She is also gene- 

 rally accompanied by one young one, to which she is 

 remarkably attentive, and which she carries clasped 

 with her swimming paw when young. Wounding 

 the mother only increases her maternal solicitude, 

 and the death of the young one gives rise to the 

 deepest expressions of maternal sorrow. Indeed, all 

 :hose expressions in animals, which appear to resem- ' 

 jle most the better feelings and more tender natural 

 ympathies of the human heart, appear to be dis- 

 played in their fullest perfection in the whales, so 

 that those who throw away their claims of relation- 

 ship upon apes and turtles, and all those land ani- 

 mals whereof so much has been " said or sung," had 

 much better claim kindred with " the monster of the 

 deep." The poetical pets are, in the plain prose of 

 natural history, a set of " profligate rascals." The 

 eagle is a far more orderly bird than the turtle ; and 

 the tiger himself is a " most moral brute," as com- 

 pared with the mandrill, or even the orang-utan or 

 the ehimpansee In truth, when we come to pre- 

 dicate either wisdom or well-doing, as qualities' 

 resulting from any mere forms of material substance, 

 be that substance what it may, we have arrived at 

 that plastic pitch of philosophy, according to which 

 any cause may produce any effect ; and the transi- 

 tion from making the animal a man, to making him a 

 god, aye, and immolating human victims on his altar, 

 is not, in the judgment of reason, more than a single 

 hairbreadth removed from each other. What we 

 regard as the kindly affections of animals, are never 

 wanting where the circumstances require their dis- 

 play ; but they are no more the results of good in- 

 tentions, than 'the predations of wolves are the result 

 of an organised plan for the extirpation of the whole 

 race of sheep. 



The domestic manners of whales are, however, but 

 little known, as we have them but in snatches, and 

 these generally from those whose avowed business it 

 is to kill every whale they see. They are rather 

 cumbrous museum subjects, and can be preserved 

 only in skeleton, as their flesh, though sweet, and 

 even wholesome, and far from unpalatable (when 

 young), in the recent state decays sooner in the air 

 than that of land mammalia. From the gentleness of 

 their manners, the mild and intelligent expression of 

 their eyes, and many other circumstances, there is 

 reason to believe that whales would not be difficult 

 to tame ; and it is not among the absolute physical 

 impossibilities, that some future Neptune may yoke 

 them to his car, and so circumnavigate the globe in 

 five or six weeks ; but the process is not yet begun ; 

 neither has it been "brought out" as a scheme by any 

 one of those marvel-manufacturers who are always 



