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B A L M N A. 



doubt, still occasionally cast upon the shores of Bri- 

 tain and France ; but they are so rare that the skele- 

 tons are collected for museums, or exhibited to the 

 public as a curiosity. Of this there was a recent 

 instance, in a large specimen, which had been cast 

 on shore in Flanders, being brought to London, and 

 exhibited for many months in a pavilion erected ex- 

 pressly for the purpose. 



The great decrease which has thus unquestionably 

 taken place in the numbers of this species within the 

 last two thousand years, which cannot be attributed 

 to the assiduity with which it has been sought by the 

 fishers, and which, if we are to believe even a reason- 

 able portion of the old accounts, show that during 

 that period there has been a gradual change taking 

 place in the sea. The same facts render it conclu- 

 sive that the fishing (probably it would be more cor- 

 rect to say the hunting) has not been the sole cause, 

 and probably not the chief cause, of the diminished 

 numbers of the mysticetus. That species is more de- 

 pendent upon locality, and more limited in the nature 

 of its food : and therefore we may naturally suppose 

 that it would be the first to yield to the change. 



The sea keeps no record of those races which have 

 become extinct, and of which it becomes the final and 

 total sepulchre. We do, indeed, find the remains of 

 marine animals in deposits ; but we are unable to sa} 7 

 whether these have been stranded, like the whales 

 which are occasionally cast upon our shores, or have 

 perished in the ordinary course of nature ; and if the 

 remains be very different from any thing that we find 

 now existing in the sea, it becomes of course very 

 difficult to say whether the accumulations in which 

 they are found be marine deposits or not. In some 

 places, as in the hill of Bolca in Italy, we find vast 

 multitudes of what were unquestionably former tenants 

 of the deep ; but those are always found in places 

 where there has been volcanic action : though the 

 evidences of that action do not explain how the 

 accumulations were formed. 



We do not hear of epizooty falling upon any spe- 

 cies of whale, and cutting them off by thousands, as 

 it has been known to do in the case of seals ; and it 

 is very rarely that we meet with the skeletons of 

 whales, except in alluvial deposits, which show that 

 they are stranded specimens, and have not perished in 

 the course of common death among these animals. 

 That the remains of those huge animals should be 

 so few is a curious matter, and would lead us to con- 

 clude that the bones of the giants of the ocean are 

 entombed in its profoundest depths. 



The fcreng, or carcase, of a whale is of such spe- 

 cific gravity, that, after the fat or blubber, and a 

 portion of the flesh, are removed, it sinks ; and even 

 before the commencement of the whale fishery, the 

 petrels and other sea-birds, which are exceedingly 

 numerous still, no doubt existed in such numbers as 

 even to perform the operation of removing the blub- 

 ber, and tearing away much of the flesh. The bones 

 of whales are very porous ; but, like the bones of land 

 mammalia, they contain much less gelatine, and 

 much more of the salts of lime, than the bones of 

 fishes. They are, therefore, specifically heavier than 

 sea-water in all their solid parts ; and, after they have 

 sunk to the depth of hundreds of fathoms, the pres- 

 sure of the water will expel the oil from their pores, 

 and send it up to the surface to form part, and it may 

 he no small part, of the store which is always float- 

 ing there, and upon which the storm-petrels, and it 



may be many other surface animals, in great part, 

 subsist. What becomes of the salts of lime, whether 

 they are changed into chlorides or sulphates, the one 

 diffusible through the water, and entering into new 

 combinations, and the other forming beds of gypsum 

 or plaster stone, while the phosphoric acid rises, and 

 contributes to the phosphorescence which is so ob- 

 servable in the sea, or in its inhabitants, is matter of 

 conjecture, not of proof ; but still it is matter of very 

 rational and probable conjecture. The ocean is a 

 laboratory on the most gigantic scale, and therefore 

 it is quite natural that we should find its giant in- 

 habitants connected with its most extended and pow- 

 erful operations. It is worthy of bearing in mind, too, 

 that, in the depths of those polar seas into which it is 

 most probable that the bones of whales descend, the 

 powers of the ocean must work nearly alone ; be- 

 cause the rays of the sun, slantingly as they fall on 

 the surface there, and much as they are bent up- 

 ward, both by reflection and refraction, can have but 

 little effect, either as heat or as light, in those pro- 

 foundly obscure depths. 



The exploring of these abodes of darkness is of 

 course beyond the scope of human ingenuity ; but 

 yet there is food for more than the mere fancy in 

 accompanying the remains of the whale to this their 

 last home a home from which nothing can fetch 

 them back, save that action of heat which can rend 

 the solid strata of this earth more easily than the hail- 

 stone breaks the most slender filament of gossamer. 



There can be in those depths no change of day or 

 night, or of seasons ; but, if the weight of water re- 

 main on them, the same utter and unbroken darkness 

 while the earth endures, the chains upon all ac- 

 tion are heavy beyond what would be readily ima- 

 gined. There is a pressure of, sav, one thousand 

 atmospheres, without estimating the depth at its 

 maximum ; that is, in round numbers, a pressure of 

 about twelve tons on the square inch. We men- 

 tioned (see the article ATMOSPHERE) that the inten- 

 sity of action is always in proportion to the resist- 

 ance which is opposed to it ; and thus the action of 

 heat, or any thing else that could act at those vast 

 depths, would be a thousand times more intense than 

 at the mean surface of the sea. If, then, the action 

 of heat, displayed as forky lightning in the thin air, 

 can cleave rocks, and make iron run liquid like" 

 water, or burn it as a taper, what shall we think of the 

 energy of the same agent in the depths of the ocean! 

 This may seem a digression from the describing of a 

 species of animal which are found at the surface of the 

 sea ; but the continual enticement which it holds out 

 to such digressions, is one of the great beauties 

 of natural history. They let us see what nature 

 is capable of accomplishing ; and, by direct infer- 

 ence, we can know how mighty must have been that 

 Voice, which, in one moment, spake the whole into 

 existence. 



The natural decay of the whales during the period 

 of authenticated history, involves, as an almost neces- 

 sary consequence, the ultimate extinction of the race, 

 unless some power, of which we can form no idea, 

 shall pass over the ocean with renovation on its wings. 

 And when we look at the land, we see proofs of simi- 

 lar extinctions having taken place there. Of these 

 he more remarkable ones are in nearly the same lati- 

 udes from which the whales are now feeding. The 

 races of land animals that have perished from these 

 latitudes are also, in many instances, of larger dimcn- 



