THE SPERM WHALE FISHERY 
187 
black whale fishery ; for in another part he says, “I hear 
not that they have found any sperma ceti in any of 
those whales ;” but subsequently he states in the same 
letter, “ I have heard from credible persons that there is 
a kind of whale having great teeth , as have the sperma 
ceti at Eleutheria, and others of the Bermuda islands „ 
One of this place, ” he continues, u John Perinchief, 
found one there dead driven upon an island, and though 
I think ignorant in the business, yet got a great quantity 
of sperma ceti out of it/’ He says again, “ It seems 
they have not so much oil as ours (meaning the black 
whale), but the oil, I hear, is at first like sperma ceti* 
but they clarifie it, I think, by the fire.” But in vol. iii. 
Phil. Trans., in a letter from the same place, written a 
year or two afterwards, we find something like a begin- 
ning of the sperm whale fishery threatened by a Mr, 
Richard Stafford, who informs us that he has killed 
several black whales himself, and who is represented as 
a very intelligent gentleman. He says, “ great stores of 
whales make use of our coast;” but in another part he 
states — “ but here have been seen sperma ceti whales 
driven upon the shore— -these have divers teeth, about 
the bigness of a man’s wrist. I have been,” says he, 
“ at the Bahama islands, and there have seen of this same 
sort of whale, dead on the shore, with sperma all over 
their bodies. Myself \ and about twenty others , have 
agreed to try whether we can master and hill them , for 
I could never hear of any of that sort that was hilled by 
any man , such is their fierceness and swiftness He 
concludes by remarking, that one such whale would 
