OF T HE W H A L E. ,xqg 



the mouth, clofes the valve of the (lomach, opens the fphinfler at the 

 noftril, and then breathing (trongly, drives out the water. 



Their eyes have eyelids, as in man ; it is mod likely that they can 

 hear, as they certainly utter founds, and bellow to each other. This vo- 

 cal power would be needlefs to animals naturally deaf. The female fuckles 

 in the manner of quadrupedes, her breafts being placed above the navel. 



The number of their fins never exceeds three; i. e. two peftoral fins, 

 and one back fin ; but in fome forts the laft is wanting. Thefe fins are 

 made up of bones and mufcles ; and their Ikeleton refembles that of a 

 man's hand. Their tails alfo are placed fo as to lie flat on the furface of 

 the water J not upright or edgeways. This flat poUtion of the tail ena- 

 bles them to force themfelves fuddenly to the furface. 



Some are without teeth, properly called whales ; others have teeth 

 only in the lower jaw, and are called by the French cachalots: the nar- 

 whal has teeth only in the upper jaw ; the dolphin, porpefle, and grampus 

 have teeth both above and below. 



OF T H E W H A L E. 



TTJE now no longer hear of whales two hundred, and two hundred 

 VV and fifty feet long, which were often feen two centuries ac^o. 

 They have been deftroyed by mankind, and the fpecies is dwindled into 

 a race of diminutive animals, from thirty feet to eighty. Taking the 

 whale at his ordinary fize of eighty feet long and twenty feet high, what 

 an enormous animated miafs it appears ! Yet this great creature gambols 

 in the deep, with the eafe and agility of the fmalleft animal, an(f makes 

 its way with incredible fwiftnefs ! Though this be wonderful, perhaps 

 greater wonders are concealed in the deep. Who knows the fize of thofe 

 that remain conftantly under water, and that have been increafing in mag- 

 nitude for centuries ? to receive all that has been faid of the fea-ferpent, 

 or the Kraken, would be credulity; to rejed all^ or to deny the poffibi- 

 lity of their exiftence, would be prefumption. 



The whale is the largeft animal of which we have any certain informa- 

 tion ; there are feven different kinds; the Great Greenland Whale, with- 

 out a back fin, and black on the back; the Iceland Whale, without a 

 back fin, and whitifli on the back.; the New England Whale, with a 

 hump on the back ; the Whale with fix humps on the back ; the Fin-filh, 



Party. No. 29, Nq with 



