156 THE WHALE AND 



A Study for the Phrenologist. The Whale's Craniology. 



the sides of a ship and break it to pieces. They 

 often go in this way " head on" to boats, but 

 are generally pricked off and turned with a 

 lance, or dexterously avoided. 



From what may be called the top of the 

 forehead to the roof of the mouth of this square- 

 faced sui generis monster, it measured nine feet 

 in a straight line, and there was a correspond- 

 ing breadth and depth of forehead, so that, with 

 its prodigious volume of brain (head matter), 

 and so large a facial angle, the bust of this 

 creature is most favorably commended to the 

 fingers of phrenologists. Is it not a little sur- 

 prising, that in the researches of comparative 

 phrenology the cranium of the great sperm 

 whale should be overlooked ? 



For the matter of room, a phrenologist might 

 keep shop in it, and light it up, if he chose, with 

 its own brains, and there point out to visitors 

 by the lamp-light the places in the walls and 

 ceiling where the different organs lay. It would 

 be like a painter at Rome who should open his 

 studio in the Parthenon ; the celestial gods 

 would be eying him from the ceiling ; deified 

 men and the infernals would be looking on him 

 from all around. And if the aforesaid phrenol- 



