ORDER OE CETACEA. 
69 
and been stranded, the mother, quite taken up with her efforts to 
save it, is not long in sharing its lot. 
The Cachalot is found in a great many different seas. For 
instance, in the latitudes of Spitzbergen, near the North Cape and 
the coasts of Finnmark; the seas of Greenland; the greatest part 
of the South Atlantic Ocean; the Britannic Gulf (in 1720, one 
of these animals, driven by a storm, was stranded near the mouth 
of the Elbe) ; the banks of Newfoundland ; the Gulf of Gascony, 
&c. We hear, from time to time, at long intervals, that a solitary 
example of this creature has been seen on our own shores 
(French). In 1784 thirty- two Cachalots were stranded on the 
coast of Audierne (Brittany). They had been preceded by a 
multitude of fish and of Porpoises, and their bellowings or 
roarings were heard for more than four kilometres inland. They 
remained alive on the sand for about twenty-four hours. In 1767 
a Cachalot was taken in the bay of the Somme, near St. Yalery. 
Another ran ashore, in 1741, at the mouth of the Avons, on the 
coast of Bayonne. 
It is in the seas of India, the Moluccas, J apan, and the Corea, that 
the Americans and the English pursue the Cachalot — a dangerous 
undertaking, on account of. the agility, the suddenness of the 
movements, and the power of this animal. The expedition lasts 
from three to four years, and it is full of hazard — of perils without 
equal in other maritime enterprises. The Cachalot does not flee 
from the enemy as does the Whale ; it makes a great fight for its 
life. With its enormous head, a sort of gigantic battering-ram, 
it strikes and smashes the boats. With one blow of its powerful 
tail, it sweeps away and casts into the air everything it finds in 
its way. The taking of Cachalots is very important in a com- 
mercial point of view. One of these animals can furnish a 
hundred tons of oil. The price per ton being two hundred and 
fifty francs (£10) ; the total value of the oil supjDlied by one of 
these creatures is twenty-five thousand francs (£1,000). Com- 
merce and the arts derive from the Cachalot other articles besides 
oil ; for instance, ivory, ambergris, and spermaceti. 
The teeth furnish a sort of ivory, but this is of inferior quality. 
The ambergris is only a kind of intestinal product, or rather 
a part of the Cachalot’s food, incompletely digested. It is the 
effect of a disease, and since it is just as well to call things by their 
