•f Ambergrife. 253 
The gentlemen I converfcd with confefled, that if they knew 
not from experience that ambergrife thus found will in time 
acquire the above-mentioned qualities, they would by no means 
be able to diftinguifh ambergrife from hard indurated hEces, 
This is lb true, that whenever a whale voids its faeces upon 
being hooked, they look carefully to fee if they cannot di (co- 
ver among the more liquid excrements (of which the whale 
diicharges feveral barrels) fome pieces floating on the fea, of a 
more compact lubftance than the reft ; thefe they take up and 
wafh, knowing them to be ambergrife. 
From this account it appears therefore clearly, that 
clusius is quite wrong in aflerting that ambergrife is a 
phlegmatic recrement, or indurated undigeftible part of the 
food collected and found in the ftomach of the whale, in 
the fame manner as the bezoars are found in the ftomach 
of other animals. It appears further, that what Dudley fays, 
in Phil. Tranf. vol. XXIII. from an account he received 
from a whale-ftfherman, one Mr. atkins, of Bofton in New 
England, who was one of the firft who went out a fiftiing 
for the fpermaceti-whale about the year 1720, viz. that the 
ambergrife found in whales is a kind of animal production, 
like mulk and caftoreum, &c. fecreted and collected in a pecu- 
liar bag or bladder, which is furnifhed with an excretory duCt 
or canal, the fpout of which runs tapering into and through 
the length of the penis ; and that this bag, which lies juft 
over the tefticles, is almoft full of a deep orange- coloured 
liquor, not quite fo thick as oil, of the fame fmeil as the balls 
of ambergrife, which float and fwim loofe in it ; which colour 
and liquor may alfo be found in the canal of the penis ; and 
that therefore ambergrife is never to be found in any female, 
but in the male only, is equally deftitute of truth. The aflfer- 
Vo l, LXXIII. H h tions 
