REMARKS. 
19 
folk, is recorded by Sir Thomas Brown, so long ago 
as 1686 . 
Mr. Bennett, in a paper which he read, not long 
since, before the Zoological Society, also stated that the 
sperm whale has the power of throwing up water with 
the expired air at particular times ; but from what I 
have heard, I believe the observations which he made 
were not deemed conclusive of the fact, and I have not 
yet been able to peruse his paper myself. 
In the conclusion of this subject I may be allowed to 
state:— that I have been also very close to the baleen a 
my sticetus when it has been feeding and breathing, and yet 
I never saw even that animal differ in the latter respect 
from the sperm whale in the nature of the spout ; and even 
in porpoises, which I have seen in hundreds of instances 
playing or gamboling about the bows of our ship as 
she has been sailing along, yet in not a solitary instance 
did I ever observe anything but vapour dart from their 
nostrils, and which is but the work of an instant, for 
they are not on the surface more than that time, when 
they not only perform their expiration but inspiration, 
and again disappear in the twinkling of an eye. 
Again, it has been observed by the same naturalist, 
who has been so frequently noticed in these remarks 
because he has been the most prominent historian on the 
subject with which we are engaged, that the spring is the 
time when the intercourse of the sexes takes place, 
which if true would certainly lead us to expect only at 
particular seasons a certain increase of these valuable 
animals — but this is not the case, as we find young sperm 
