84 
HABITS OF THE SPERM WHALE l 
FEEDING. 
The food of the sperm whale consists almost wholly 
of an animal of the cuttle-fish kind, called by sailors the 
squid / 5 and by naturalists the a sepia octopus / 5 the 
form and natural history of which will be fully noticed 
under the head of “ Nature of the Sperm Whale’s Food.” 
See Chapter vii. 
This squid, or sepia, at least forms the principal part 
of his sustenance when at a distance from shore, or what 
is termed “ off-shore ground/’ but when met with nearer 
land, he has been known, when mortally or severely 
wounded, to eject from his stomach quantities of small 
fish, which are met with in great abundance in the bays 
and somewhat near the shore, especially in Volcano Bay 
on the coast of Japan, and in the Straits of Corea, which 
joins the Pacific Ocean with the sea of Japan; he some- 
times, however, throws up fish as large as a moderate 
sized salmon. It would be difficult to believe that so 
large and unwieldy an animal as this whale could ever 
catch a sufficient quantity of such small animals, if he 
had to pursue them individually for his food ; and I am 
not aware that either the fish he sometimes lives upon, 
or the squid, are ever found in shoals, or closely con- 
gregated, except in one solitary instance recorded by 
Captain Colnett, regarding the “ squid,” in which he 
states that, while off the Galapago’s Islands “ neither 
himself nor any of the oldest whalers had ever seen the 
squid in shoals before.” It remains, then, to be in- 
quired in what way the sperm whale usually does supply 
his enormous frame with sufficient food. 
