CETACEA. 



violence when wounded, the chase of the Sperm- 

 whale is a highly hazardous employment. " A single 

 blow with his tail, will dash a boat to pieces, and 

 scatter the unhappy navigators wide on the surface 

 of the ocean ; and there is a well authenticated in- 

 stance on record of an American ship of large size 

 being stove in and foundered by the blow inflicted 

 by the head of a male Cachalot." It is pursued 

 both in the Northern and Southern Seas, in which 

 it associates in herds of one or two hundred, chiefly 

 females, led by an old male. The cuttle-fish (Sepia) 

 forms a large portion of their food. 



Balana* the Whale. 



Attaining to as great a size as the Cachalots, and 

 possessing as large a head, the true Whales are easily 

 distinguished by the head being of a somewhat more 

 symmetrical form, more narrow and rounded in 

 front, and by the total absence of teeth in either jaw. 

 In the place of these instruments, the Whale is pro- 

 vided with a very singular apparatus ; the upper jaw, 

 which shuts into the lower, is furnished with a great 

 number of parallel thin plates, placed perpendicularly 

 and very closely set, composed of a fibrous horn, 

 though usually called whalebone ; they are in number 

 about three hundred in each jaw, some of them twelve 

 feet long, but diminishing in size ; fringed at the edge. 

 The design of this peculiar organ affords another ex- 

 ample of that beneficent wisdom, which in a study 

 of the works of God meets us at every turn. The 



phafaina, a whale (Arist.). 



