THE WHITE WHALE m 
of the leviathan; at the outset it is hut well to attend to a matter 
almost indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of the 
more special leviathanic revelations and allusions of all sorts which 
are to follow. 
It is some systematised exhibition of the whale in his broad genera, 
that I would now fain put before you. Yet is it no easy task. The 
classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed. 
Listen to what the best and latest authorities have laid down. 
“No branch of Zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled 
Cotology,” says Captain Scoreshy, a. d. 1820. 
“It is not my intention, were it in my power, to enter into the in- 
quiry as to the true method of dividing the cetacea into groups and 
families. . . . Utter confusion exists among the historians of this 
animal” (sperm whale), says Surgeon Beale. a.d. 1839. 
“Unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable waters.” 
“Impenetrable veil covering our knowledge of the cetacea.” “A field 
strewn with thorns.” “All these incomplete indications but serve to 
torture us naturalists.” 
Thus speak of the whale, the great Cuvier, and John Hunter, and 
Lesson, those lights of zoology and anatomy. Nevertheless, though of 
real knowledge there be little, yet of books there are plenty; and so 
in some small degree, with cetology, or the science of whales. Many 
are the men, small and great, old and new, landsmen and seamen, who 
have at large or in little, written of the whale. Bun over a few: — 
The Authors of the Bible ; Aristotle ; Pliny ; Aldrovandi ; Sir Thomas 
Browne; Gesner; Kay; Linnseus; Kondeletius; Willoughby Green; 
Artedi; Sibhald; Brisson; Marten; Lacepede; Bonneterre; Desmarest; 
Baron Cuvier; Frederic Cuvier; John Hunter; Owen; Scoreshy; 
Beale; Bennett; J. Boss Brown; the Author of Miriam Coffin; Olm- 
stead; and the Kev. T. Cheever. But to what ultimate generalising 
purpose all these have written, the above cited extracts will show. 
Of the names on this list of whale authors, only those following Owen 
ever saw living whales; and but one of them was a real professional 
harpooneer and whaleman. I mean Captain Scoreshy. On the sep- 
arate subject of the Greenland or right-whale, he is the best existing 
authority. But Scoreshy knew nothing and says nothing of the great 
sperm whale, compared with which the Greenland whale is almost 
