2 
INTRODUCTORY 
u of that heated imagination which leads some en- 
thusiasts to see nothing in nature, hut miracles and 
monsters. 
In fact, till the appearance of Mr. Huggins 5 admir- 
able print, few, with the exception of those immediately 
engaged in the fishery, had the most distant idea 
even of the external form of this animal ; and of its 
manners and habits, people in general seem to know as 
little as if its capture had never given employment to 
British capital, or encouragement to the daring courage 
of our hardy seamen. While the very term, whale- 
fishery, seems associated with the coast of Greenland 
or icebound Spitz bergen, and the stern magnificence of 
arctic scenery, few connect the pursuit of this s< sea 
beast ” with the smiling latitudes of the South Pacific, 
and the coral islands of the torrid zone ; and fewer still 
have more distinct conception of the object of this 
pursuit, than that it is a whale, producing the substance 
called spermaceti, and the animal oil best adapted to the 
purpose of illumination. 
The Greenland whale, or Balcena mysticetus , has so 
frequently been described in a popular manner, that the 
public voice has long enthroned him as monarch of the 
deep, and perhaps the dread of disturbing such weighty 
matters as a settled sovereignty and public opinion, may 
have deterred those best acquainted with the merits of 
the case from supporting the more legitimate claims of 
his southern rival to this pre-eminence. 
Since the year 1775, in which we date the origin of 
the sperm-whale fishery from this country, although 
