78 THE WHALE AND 



A Frenchman's Ingenuity and End. Hint to Legislators. 



the blubber containing a milky fluid instead of 

 oil, and yet the whale floated as light as a cork. 

 Again, he has killed a whale with a single lance, 

 and he sunk like a stone, and another has sunk 

 after lancing a hundred times. 



An ingenious Frenchman, I am told, in these 

 seas, once rigged swivels in the heads of his 

 boats, and had bladders and other gear to float 

 dead whales ; but he succeeded with it all so 

 poorly, that, in mortification and despair, when 

 he put into one of the ports of New Zealand, he 

 went out into the woods and shot himself with 

 a brace of pistols through both his eyes. I 

 think some quick-witted Yankee would do bet- 

 ter to give his attention to experimenting in 

 this line; and, even if the whales would not 

 be killed or floated, he would not be such a fool 

 as to blow his own brains out. It is a true 

 saying of Massinger : 



Who kills himself t' avoid misery, fears it, 

 And at the best shows a bastard valor ; 



which, forasmuch as the crime is becoming 

 popular nowadays, it would not be amiss to 

 put a stop to, by enacting a law, as they once 

 did in ancient Rome, to expose the body of eve- 

 ry suicide naked in the market-place after death. 



