OF FISH * 
257 
cies in the midst of numberless enemies, and serves to 
furnish the rest with a sustenance adapted to their na- 
ture. 
Fish, like the land-animals, are either solitary or gre- 
garious. Some, as trout, salmon, &c. migrate to depo- 
sit their spawn. Of the sea-fish, the cod, herring, &c. 
assemble in immense shoals, and migrate in these shoals 
through vast tracts of the ocean. 
Whale. ( Balosna . Mammalia Class . Lin. PI. 44.) 
The whale is of the cetaceous order of fish, and pro- 
duces its young alive; and the ancients have described 
it as being six hundred feet in length. At present it is 
only found in the northern seas ninety feet in length, 
and twenty in breadth; but formerly they were taken of 
a much greater size, when the captures were less fre- 
quent, and the fish had time to grow. Such is their bulk 
within the arctic circle; but in those of the torrid zone, 
many are seen a hundred and sixty feet long. There 
are many turnings and windings in this fish’s nostrils, 
and it has no fin on the back. The head is very much 
disproportioned to the size of the body, being one third 
the size of the fish; and the under lip is much broader 
than the upper. The tongue is composed of a soft spungy 
fat, capable of yielding five or six barrels of oil. The 
gullet is very small for so vast a fish, not exceeding four 
inches in width. 
This fish varies in colour; the back of some being red, 
the belly generally white. Others are black, some mot- 
tled, others quite white. Their colours in the water are 
extremely beautiful, and their skin is very smooth and 
slippery. Every species of whale propagates only with 
those of its kind, and does not at all mingle with the rest; 
however, they are generally seen in shoals, of different 
kinds together, and make their migrations in large com- 
panies from one ocean to another. 
Whales are chiefly taken in the northern seas. The 
English send out with every ship six or seven boats; each 
of these has one harpooner, one man at the rudder, one 
manager of the line, and four seamen to row it. In each 
boat there are also two or three harpoons, several lances, 
2 2 
