WHALES. 2 



favourite pursuit, I wonder that with your 

 passion for the amusement of angling, you 

 have never made an expedition in one of 

 our whalers with Captain Scoresby for in- 

 stance : you would then have engaged in a 

 sport of a new kind. 



HAL. I should like much to see a -whale 

 taken, but I do not think the sight worth 

 the dangers and privations of such a voyage. 

 It would only be an amusing sight and not 

 an enterprize, unless indeed you yourself 

 employed the harpoon ; and after all it must 

 be a tedious operation, that of watching the 

 sinking and rising of a fish obedient to a 

 natural instinct, which in this instance is 

 the cause of his death. 

 POIET. How? 



HAL. The whale, having no air bladder, 

 can sink to the lowest depths of the ocean, 

 and mistaking the harpoon for the teeth of 

 a sword fish or a shark, he instantly de- 

 scends, this being his manner of freeing 

 himself from these enemies, who cannot 

 bear the pressure of a deep ocean, and from 

 ascending and descending in small space, he 



