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MOBY DICK; OR 
unworthy mentioning. And here he it said, that the Greenland whale 
is an usurper upon the throne of the seas. He is not even by any means 
the largest of the whales. Yet, owing to the long priority of his 
claims, and the profound ignorance which, till some seventy years back, 
invested the then fabulous or utterly unknown sperm whale, and which 
ignorance to this present day still reigns in all but some few scientific 
retreats and whale ports ; this usurpation has been every way complete. 
Reference to nearly all the leviathanic allusions in the great poets of 
past days, will satisfy you that the Greenland whale, without one rival, 
was to them the monarch of the seas. But the time has at last come 
for a new proclamation. This is Charing Cross ; hear ye ! good people 
all, — the Greenland whale is deposed, — the great sperm whale now 
reigneth ! 
There are only two books in being which at all pretend to put the 
living sperm whale before you, and at the same time, in the remotest 
degree succeed in the attempt. Those books are Beale’s and Bennett’s ; 
both in their time surgeons to English South Sea whale ships, and both 
exact and reliable men. The original matter touching the sperm whale 
to be found in their volumes is necessarily small, but so far as it goes, 
it is of excellent quality, though mostly confined to scientific description. 
As yet, however, the sperm whale, scientific or poetic, lives not com- 
plete in any literature. Far above all other hunted whales, his is an 
unwritten life. 
Now the various species of whales need some sort of popular com- 
prehensive classification, if only an easy outline one for the present, 
hereafter to be filled in all its departments by subsequent labourers. 
As no better man advances to take this matter in hand, I hereupon 
offer my own poor endeavours. I promise nothing complete; because 
any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason 
infallibly be faulty. I shall not pretend to a minute anatomical de- 
scription of the various species, or — in this place at least — to much 
of any systematisation of cetology. I am the architect, not the builder. 
But it is a ponderous task; no ordinary letter-sorter in the Post 
Office is equal to it. To grope down into the bottom of the sea after 
them; to have one’s hands among the unspeakable foundations, ribs, 
and very pelvis of the world ; this is a fearful thing. What am I that 
I should essay to hook the nose of this leviathan ! The awful taunt- 
