In its general ftiape and appearance this animal is 

 peculiarly uncouth ; the head conftituting nearly a third 

 of the whole mafs. The mouth is of prodigious ampli- 

 tude ; the tongue fometimes meafuring eighteen or 

 twenty feet in length. The eyes molt difproportionably 

 fmall. In the upper jaw is a vaft number of very long 

 horny laminae difpofed in regular feries : thefe are po- 

 pularly known by the name of whale-bone. On the 

 top of the head is a double fiftula or fpout-hole, through 

 which the enormous animal difcharges the water at in- 

 tervals, caufing the appearance of a marine jet d'eau 

 afcending to a great height in the air. The general co- 

 lour of this fpecies is a pale whitifh alh, deeper on the 

 back and fins, (where indeed it is nearly blackifh.) 

 Like mo ft other animals, however, it varies in intenfity 

 of colour. Its general refidence is in the northern feas, 

 where it has long conftituted the principal trade of the 

 whale or oil fifliery. Its food confifts' chiefly of diffe- 

 rent fpecies of Sepia?, Medufae, &c. 



It is to be lamented that in the poetical defcriptions 

 of various flriking fcenes in natural hiftory, the epithets 

 by which many objects are diftinguifhed are, for want 

 of due knowledge of the fubjeft, improperly chofen, 

 and utterly inconfonant with the character of the things 

 intended ; by which means the defcription, however 

 beautiful in point of language, fails in point of accu- 

 racy. This is no where more ftrikingly illuftrated than 

 in the auguft lines of Milton, in which the defcription 

 of a lleeping whale is injured by an epithet of all others 

 the leaft according with the nature of the animal. 



, a that fea-beaft 



Leviathan, which God of all his works 



Created 



