MAMMALIA. 431 



This remarkable structure lias another use; it acts like a 

 blanket, and, being a bad conductor of caloric, prevents the 

 animal heat from being dissipated, thus enabling these warm- 

 blooded inhabitants of the sea to resist the cold of the medium 

 in which they live. Nor does its utility stop even here; it is 

 specifically lighter than the sea-water, and though its weight 

 sometimes exceeds thirty tons, it does not act as an incum- 

 brance, but in reality renders the animal more buoyant. 



Thus provided, the Rorqual, of ninety or a hundred feet in 

 length, the largest of all Whales, and consequently of all 

 existing animals, can propel its enormous bulk through the 

 water, or float at ease upon the surface. To such a being 

 how appropriate and how beautiful are the words of Milton: 



-" That sea-beast 



Leviathan, which God of all his works 

 Created hngest that swim the ocean stream: 

 Him, haply, slumbering on the Norway foam, 

 The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff, 

 Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, 

 With fixed anchor in his scaly* rind, 

 Moors by his side under the lee, while night 

 Invests the sea, and wished morn delays." 



PARADISE LOST. Book I. 



met with this extract, we had an opportunity of examining a Hyperoodon, 

 or Bottle-head Whale, taken in Belfast Bay. One of the captors had 

 inflicted a wound on the back with a hatchet, and the dark skin and 

 light coloured blubber underneath we could compare to nothing but a 

 newly-cut cake of caoutchouc. In firmness and elasticity, when pressed 

 by the finger, the resemblance seemed not less perfect. 



* It is almost needless to say that the skin is not "scaly." In the 

 works of Gesner, 1588, there is the figure of a vessel anchored to a 

 Whale; so that the poet has given expression to what was at one time 

 the current belief. 



