326 THE INDO-PACIFIC AND ITS SHORES 



One of the arguments in favour of the constant wakefulness of cetaceans, is that 

 individuals will follow a ship for days, which they could not well do while asleep. 

 Another is that whales — except occasionally a right-whale or a sperm-whale — are 

 not found floating motionless on the surface, and reasons are given against the 

 theory that they sleep at the bottom. It may, however, be urged that if whales 

 never sleep, they must have food at night, and be able to catch it, and what then 

 becomes of the argument that they cannot capture prey in the dark ocean abysses ? 

 Further, it is difficult to imagine that an animal with such a highly oi-ganised 

 brain as a whale can exist without ever sleeping, especially when it is remembered 

 that fishes sleep. 



Returning to the cachalot, it may be mentioned that although far less 

 numerous at the present day than it was half or three-quarters of a century 

 ago, 'schools' of considerable size are still from time to time to be met with. 

 Decisive evidence of this is afforded by the fact that in the early part of 1910 no 

 less than thirty-seven sperm-whales, of which thirty-six were males, averaging 

 about fifty feet in length, were stranded on Perkins Island, Tasmania, the 

 carcases of all of which were utilised for commercial purposes. The occurrence 

 was at the time regarded as unprecedented, but there is a record that in the year 

 1723 seventeen sperm-whales were stranded at the mouth of the Elbe, and also 

 that a much larger number were driven ashore in the Bay of Audierne, in the 

 Department of Finistere, France, on 14th March 1784. On the latter occasion 

 the number of stranded individuals was thirty-two, and as each came within reach 

 of the breakers it is recorded that it was rolled helplessly over and over, and 

 eventually thrown on the shore. 



In addition to the oil from its blubber, the two most valuable products of the 

 sperm-whale are spermaceti and ambergris, the nature and location of the former 

 of which have been already mentioned. Both spermaceti (as we know it) and 

 ambergris have long been known to be the products of whales, although there was 

 formerly an idea that at least one of them was obtained from the Greenland whale 

 instead of both of them being yielded chiefly by the cachalot. The spermaceti of 

 the older naturalists, such as Olaus Magnus, Conrad Gesner, and other European 

 writers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries — by whom it is alluded to as 

 ambar — seems, however, to have been ambergris, as it is described as being: of a 

 greyish colour and found floating on the surface of the sea ; in both of which 

 respects it agrees with what we now call ambergris rather than spermaceti. And 

 it may be added that from its physical structure, ambergris rather than spermaceti, 

 is much more likely to have been regarded as cetacean sperm. Such amounts of 

 real spermaceti as were obtained previous to about the year 1700 were not 

 improbably the products of sperm-whales stranded on the coasts of the Mediter- 

 ranean, as the Italians have from early times called this whale ca/pidoleo, i.e. 

 ' oil-head,' and were thus evidently familiar with the fact that the cavity of 

 the skull contains the oily liquid which solidifies after death into what we call 

 spermaceti. On the other hand, sperm-whales are but rarely stranded on the 

 British coasts, and the testimony of the old Norfolk naturalist Sir Thomas 

 Browne tells us that such carcases were expected to contain ambergris in the 

 stomach, but makes no mention of spermaceti, It accordingly appears that for a 



