254 



HISTORY OF FISHES. 



its manners and those of ihe elephant. They 

 are both the strongest and the largest animals 

 in their respective elements; neither offer in- 

 jury, but are terrible when provoked to resent- 



blubber. Its power is tremendous. A single stroke 

 throws a large boat with all its crew into the air. 

 Sometimes the whale places himself in a perpendicular 

 position with the head downwards, and, rearing his 

 tail on high, beats the water with awful violence. 

 On these occasions 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 expres- 

 sive of his boundless strength, attract the attention of 

 the navigator at the distance of miles." 



There are various kinds of whales. That already 

 described is the mysticetus, or the right whale, as he 

 is called by British sailors, on account of his superior 

 quantity of blubber having pointed him out as the 

 most proper subject for the fishery. The razor back 

 (Baltena physalis} is larger, more formidable, but has 

 much less oil, and is never attacked, unless by mis- 

 take. The cachalot or spermaceti whales, which chiefly 

 abound in the Southern Polar ocean, are gregarious; 

 that is to say, they usually appear in large herds. 

 Their oil is small in quantity, but is much esteemed. 

 The narwal is seldom above sixteen feet in length, and 

 has a tusk projecting above its upper jaw, from which 

 the sailors call him the sea unicorn. 



When we consider the enormous bulk of the most 

 of cetaceous animals, we shall be surprised at the ra- 

 pidity of motion which is a general character of the 

 tribe. It has been computed that some of them are 

 capable of rushing through thirty-three feet in a se- 

 cond of time, and that, supposing them to proceed 

 with an uniform and uninterrupted motion, twenty- 

 three days would be sufficient for enabling them to 

 circumnavigate the globe. Though the mouth of the 

 whale is so large, that, in some individuals several 

 men have been able to stajid upright in the inside of it, 

 the throat is in general so very narrow as to admit of 

 only a small object passing. Some kinds are furnished 

 with teeth; but the balance, instead of those organs, \ 

 have a curious apparatus, from which the well-known 

 substance called whalebone is derived. According to 

 the description given by Baron Cuvier, " the maxil- | 

 lary (cheek) bones in this tribe, form on their inferior j 

 surface two inclined planes, which give to the palate the 

 appearance of the roof of a house reversed, and their 

 two surfaces are concave. To these are attached a 

 series of laminae (thin plates) parallel to each other, 

 and having a transverse direction with regard to the 

 axis of the body. Several hundred laminae may be 

 counted on each side, and in the Greenland whale 

 they often exceed ten feet in length. The laminae 

 present on their internal sides layers of horny fibres, 

 growing from the horny plates, but less fine, and which 

 form a fringe or loose border hanging down upon and 

 investing the whole bulk of the tongue. The use of 

 this apparatus seems to be to retain, as with a net, 

 those small animals which the whales seize and swal- 

 low for food. 



Against these mighty animals man wages a war so ex- 

 terminating as to have driven them from their ancient 

 haunts to seek for safety in the more inaccessible 

 parts of the ocean ; hither, however, they are followed 

 and killed, in order to obtain the immense quantity of 

 oil which they yield, and of which we are now to 

 speak. Fat, or oil, which is lighter than water, is abun- 

 dantly supplied to fishes, in order to counteract their 



ment. The fin-fish indeed, in some measure, 

 differs from the great whale in this particular, 

 as it subsists chiefly upon herrings, great 

 shoals of which it is often seen driving before 



tendency to sink in this fluid. The solid parts of 

 their bodies, as indeed of all other animals, being 

 heavier than water, it is evident, that, unless pro- 

 vided with a sufficient supply of some substance lighter 

 than water, it would have required a constant effort, 

 on their parts, to keep themselves at any given level. 

 Now, the quantity of fat with which fishes are in ge- 

 neral furnished, being very nearly in the same pro- 

 portion to the solid parts as to bring their body, collec- 

 tively taken, to about the same specific gravity as that 

 of the water which they inhabit, supersedes in them 

 the necessity of making any efforts except for the pur- 

 pose of changing their position. We all know of how 

 oleaginous a nature is the flesh of many fishes com- 

 monly brought to table, as the salmon and the eel ; 

 and in the internal parts of fishes in general the quan- 

 tity of fat is still more remarkable. The gall of fishes 

 is little else than a kind of oil, and it is well known 

 what large quantities of this may be got from the 

 livers of the cod, ling, and others in every-day use. 



Now, it is for the same purpose of diminishing their 

 specific gravity that the cetaceous tribes are furnished, 

 like fishes, with a prodigious quantity of fat ; for it 

 must be remembered that they require not merely to 

 be kept at any given level below the water, but to be 

 raised again to the surface, as often as they have dived 

 below it. This is the main use of the enormous quan- 

 tity of oil which is found in these animals, situated 

 for the most part in what is called the blubber im- 

 mediately under the skin as the substance called 

 lard is under that of the hog and constituting the 

 train-oil of commerce. But besides this mass of sub- 

 cutaneous fat many cetaceous animals, as the bottle- 

 nosed or spermaceti whale (Physcter macrucephalus), 

 have a second collection of a similar substance, except 

 that it is of a purer quality and firmer consistence, in 

 a large reservoir at the top of the head, near the part 

 where the pulmonary spiracles open. This is the 

 substance known in the shops by the name of sperma- 

 ceti ; and as the oil of the blubber serves to rendei 

 the body collectively lighter than the water which 

 these animals inhabit, so the spermaceti serves to 

 render the top of the head the most buoyant part of 

 the body, so that it is kept above the surface without 

 any exertion. The quantity of train-oil procured 

 from the great northern whale amounts frequently 

 to one-twelfth of the weight of its enormous carcase ; 

 the tongue alone, which is said to be "about the size 

 of a great feather-bed," often yielding five or six bar- 

 rels ; and when we are informed that the cavity in 

 the skull of the bottle-nosed whale, appropriated to 

 the reception of the spermaceti, is often sixteen or 

 eighteen feet long, and of a proportionate breadth, we 

 may form some idea of the quantity of this substance 

 which it contains. Such, then, is the source of the 

 oil for which men endure such privations, and brave 

 such dangers, and have done so from very ancient 

 times; for the whale-fishery is of long standing. Al- 

 though the Norwegians probably captured the whale be- 

 fore any other European nation engaged in so perilous 

 an undertaking, the Biscayans were the first to prose- 

 cute it as a regular commercial pursuit. They carried 

 it on with great vigour and success in the twelfth, thir- 

 teenth, and fourteenth centuries. In 1261, we find 

 from the work of Noel, " Sur 1'AntiquiU? de la Peche 

 de la Baleine," that a tithe was laid upon the tongues of 

 whales imported into Bayonne, they being then a highly 

 esteemed species of food. In 1338, Edward III. relin- 

 quished to Peter de Puyanne a duty of 6 sterling each 



