112 THE WHALE AND 



An Affecting Instance of Maternal Solicitude in a Whale. 



his tremendous weapon deep in its ribs, which 

 was no sooner done than the poor animal darted 

 away with its anxious dam, taking out a hun- 

 dred fathoms of line. It was but a little time, 

 however, before, being checked, and the barb 

 lacerating its vitals, it turned on its back, and, 

 displaying its white belly on the surface of the 

 water, it floated a motionless corpse. 



The huge dam, with an affecting maternal 

 instinct more powerful than reason, never quit- 

 ted the body till a cruel harpoon entered her 

 own sides ; then, with a single tap of her tail, 

 she cut in two one of the boats, and took to 

 flight, but returned soon, exhausted with loss 

 of blood, to die by her calf, evidently, in her 

 last moments, more occupied with the preserva- 

 tion of her young than of herself. 



The habits and living of the sperm whale 

 are quite as different from those of the right as 

 is its structure. Its head is enormously large 

 and unshapely, and furnished with an immense 

 under jaw, that is armed with two rows of mam- 

 moth teeth, forty-eight and fifty-four in num- 

 ber. It seizes its prey with these teeth, hav- 

 ing no whalebone sieve or strainer, like what 

 has been already described in the right whale, 



