371 
THE WHITE WHALE 
inquire then on what principles the Sovereign is originally invested 
with that right. The law itself has already been set forth. But Plow- 
don gives us the reason for it. Says Plowden, the whale so caught 
belongs to the King and Queen, “because of its superior excellence.” 
And by the soundest commentators this has ever been held a cogent 
argument in such matters. 
In his treaties on “Queen-Gold,” or Queen-pinmoney, an old King’s 
Bench author, one William Prynne, thus discourseth : “Ye tail is ye 
Queen’s, that ye Queen’s wardrobe may he supplied with ye whalebone.” 
Xow this was written at a time when the black limber bone of the Green- 
land or Bight whale was largely used in ladies’ bodices. But this 
same hone is not in the tail; it is in the head, which is a sad mistake 
for a sagacious lawyer like Prynne. But is the Queen a mermaid, to 
be presented with a tail ? An allegorical meaning may lurk here. 
There are two royal fish so styled by the English law writers — the 
whale and the sturgeon ; both royal property under certain limitations, 
and nominally supplying the tenth branch of the crown’s ordinary rev- 
enue. I know not that any other author has hinted of the matter ; but 
by inference it seems to me that the sturgeon must be divided in the 
same way as the whale, the King receiving the highly dense and elastic 
head peculiar to that fish, which symbolically regarded, may possibly 
be humorously grounded upon some presumed congeniality. And thus 
there seems a reason in all things, even in law. 
CHAPTEK XC 
THE PEQUOD MEETS THE ROSEBUD 
“In vain it was to rake for ambergriese in the paunch of this Leviathan, 
insufferable fetor denying not inquiry.” 
Sir T. Browne , V. E. 
It was a week or two after the last whaling scene recounted, and when 
we were slowly sailing over a sleepy, vapoury, midday sea, that the many 
noses on the Pequod’s deck proved more vigilant discoverers than the 
three pairs of eyes aloft. A peculiar and not very pleasant smell was 
smelt in the sea. 
