THE NATURAL HISTORY 
OF 
THE SPERM WHALE. 
PART L 
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 
It is the principal object of this work to describe, 
probably, the largest inhabitant of the globe, known 
commonly under the name of the spermaceti whale,— 
by the French, as the cachalot ^— and by systematic 
naturalists, as the Physeter macrocephalus, and which 
as yet has not assumed the station to which it is 
entitled in the history of animated nature. 
Since the earliest days of natural history down to the 
present time, the sperm whale has been subjected to 
constant misrepresentation, referable to the contracted 
information of those who have undertaken its descrip- 
tion, and who have consequently been obliged to com- 
pile their accounts from sources inaccurate and false, on 
which they ought not to have depended, and they 
should rather have left a blank in the page, than to 
have filled it with the results, as Cuvier has observed, 
B 
