His CAPTORS. Ill 



The Creator's Wisdom. Care for their Young. 



using its prodigious strength to seize or lord it 

 over other inhabitants of the seas, but strains 

 its insect-like food through its admirably con- 

 trived apparatus of bone and hair, that striking- 

 ly evinces His beneficence and wise design, 



Whose creating hand 

 Nothing imperfect or deficient left 

 Of all that he created. 



It makes one think of the couplet we used to 

 read, when boys, in the New England Primer : 



Whales in the sea 



God's voice obey. 



Even the mute fish that swim the flood, 

 Leap up, and mean the praise of God. 



I have heard of one of these whales with a 

 cub, when driven into shoal water, being seen 

 to swim around its young, and sometimes to 

 embrace it with her fins, and roll over with it 

 in the waves, evincing the tenderest maternal 

 solicitude. Then, as if aware of the impend- 

 ing peril of her inexperienced offspring, as the 

 boat drew near, she would run round her calf 

 in decreasing circles, and try to decoy it sea- 

 ward, showing the utmost uneasiness and anx- 

 iety. Reckoning well that, the calf once struck, 

 the dam would never desert it, the only care of 

 the harpooner was to get near enough to bury 



