SPERMACETI AND AMBERGRIS. 379 



face and skull has the form of a vast oval basin, the 

 edges of which, seven feet high in the posterior part, de- 

 crease towards the anterior, until they wholly disappear. 

 This great cavity is principally formed by the jaw-bones ; 

 it is arched over with a kind of nbro-cartilaginous roof, 

 and divided into two compartments or stories by a mem- 

 braneous partition. Both compartments are filled with 

 adipocere, or, as it is popularly called, spermaceti (the 

 blanc de baleine of the French) ; a kind of oil which, as it 

 cools, congeals, and as it congeals turns white. The 

 cavities of which we have been speaking communicate 

 with canals which are similarly full of adipocere, distri- 

 buting it over different parts of the body, and interming- 

 ling it in the tissue under the skin. However, the chief 

 supply is found in the cephalic reservoir, which fills, we 

 are told, as fast as it is emptied ; and twenty-four barrels, 

 each containing one hundred and twenty-four pints, have 

 been obtained from a cachalot measuring sixty-four feet 

 in length. 



But it is not only spermaceti which the huge cachalot 

 furnishes ; it also yields oil, though in less quantity than 

 the Greenland whale, the layer of fat surrounding the 

 body being inferior in thickness. And yet again, a 

 third substance far more valuable than either oil or 

 spermaceti; namely, the precious ambergris, which is 

 found in. lumps, each weighing from two to thirty pounds, 

 floating in the sea, or wave-drifted on the neighbouring 

 shore. 



The origin of ambergris was long regarded as enveloped 

 in mystery. Some supposed it to be a mixture of wax and 

 honey, modified by the action of the sun and the salt water. 

 Owing to this very mystery, it was formerly held in high 



