182 THE SEA. 



side of the nose is a cavity for secreting and containing an oily fluid, which after death con- 

 cretes into the substance called spermaceti, of which in a large whale there is not unfrequently 

 a ton. The mouth extends nearly the whole length of the head, and the throat is capacious 

 enough to give passage to the body of a man, presenting a strong contrast to the contracted 

 gullet of the Greenland whale. Immediately beneath the black skin of the sperm whale is the 

 blubber, or fat, termed " the blanket," of a light yellowish colour, producing when melted the 

 sperm oil. A specimen taken in 1829 near Whitstable measured sixty-two feet in length. 

 The oil was worth -320, exclusive of the spermaceti.* Many years since the Samuel Enderby,. 

 whaler, returned from the south with a cargo of sperm oil worth 40,000. 



This whale swallows quantities of small fishes, and has been known to eject from its 

 stomach a fish as large as a moderate-sized salmon. This species is gregarious; and the herds, 

 called "schools," are females and young males. Mr. Beale saw 500 or 600 in one school.. 

 With each female school are one to three large "bulls," or " schoolmasters," as they are termed 

 by the whalers. The full-grown males almost always go in search of food. A large whale 

 will yield eighty, and sometimes one hundred, barrels of oil. Among the habits of the whale 

 are " breaching/' or leaping clear out of the water and falling back on its side, so that the 

 breach may be seen on a clear day from the mast-head at six miles' distance^ in "going a- 

 head" the whale attains ten or twelve miles an hour, which Mr. Beale believes to be its greatest 

 velocity; "lob-tailing" is lashing the water with its tail. The dangers and hairbreadth 

 escapes in the capture are very numerous. 



In 1839 there were discovered among rubbish in a tower of Durham Castle the bones of a 

 sperm whale, which, from a letter of June 20th, 1661, in the Surtees Collection, is shown to- 

 have been cast ashore at that time, and skeletonised in order to ornament this old toweiv 

 Clusius describes, in 1605, a sperm whale thrown ashore seven years before, near Scheveling r 

 where Cuvier supposed its head to be still preserved, and there is an antiquity of the kind stilt 

 shown there. 



The whale chase is an exciting scene. Sometimes the whale places himself in a perpen- 

 dicular position, with the head downwards, and rearing his tail on high, beats the water with 

 awful violence. The sea foams, and vapours darken the air ; the lashing is heard several miles 

 off, like the roar of a distant tempest. Sometimes he makes an immense spring, and rears his 

 whole body above the waves, to the admiration of the experienced whaler, but to the terror of 

 those who see for the first time this astonishing spectacle. Other motions, equally expressive 

 of his boundless strength, attract the attention of navigators at the distance of miles. The 

 whole structure of the whale exhibits most admirable adaptation to his situations and the 

 element in which he lives, in the toughness and thickness of his skin and disposition of the- 

 coating of blubber beneath, which serves the purpose if we may be permitted to use so- 

 homely a simile of an extra great-coat to keep him warm, and prevent his warm red blood 

 from being chilled by the icy seas. But provision is especially made to enable him to descend 

 uninjured to very great depths. The orifices of the nostrils are closed by valves, wonderfully 

 suited to keep out the water from the lungs, notwithstanding the pressure. In one species 



* Formerly, when spermaceti was only used in medicine, many tons of it were annually thrown into the Thames 

 as useless, the supply being so much in excess of the demand. 



