antarctic seal. But it will be asked, If the “Daedalus” animal was a whale, 
why was no blowing observed ? To this query more than one answer may 
be given. The creature was only seen during ten or fifteen minutes, and 
longer intervals than that frequently occur between the acts of respiration 
of the larger whales; but this phenomenon, in the smaller cetaceous ani¬ 
mals, is in many instances not seen at all, as, for instance, in the porpoises 
and dolphins ; and it may be taken as a general rule, that the smaller the 
whale the less perceptible is its blowing—moreover in the present case, 
the roughness and spray of the waves would all tend to render the respi¬ 
ration invisible. 
That the appearance of the animal seen from the Daedalus, swimming 
with such velocity on the surface, with the head above the water, was ex¬ 
traordinary there can be no question; but supposing it to have been a cete, 
a reference to the habits of the better-known species may help to explain 
the wonder. Beale, speaking of the spermaceti whale, states that when 
“ gallied,” i. e. frightened, it will swim at the surface at the rate of ten or 
twelve miles an hour, the head rising alternately above and sinking below 
the surface in accordance with the powerful strokes of the tail acting ver¬ 
tically on the water, and the whale is then said, in fishers’ phrase, to be 
going “head out.” Thus, then, an unusual exertion of its swimming 
powers may account for the continuance of a cetaceous fish on the surface, 
and for the projection of its head. 
But indeed these large creatures of the deep display at times strange 
vagaries, and, under the stimulus of terror, anger, pain, or sexual feeling, 
depart widely from their ordinary grave and leisurely movements. The 
writer of these pages has seen the huge tinners of the Atlantic, in calm 
weather, spring perpendicularly their full length out of the water, ex¬ 
hibiting for a moment the whole of their enormous bulk, and then, falling 
© 
prone on the surface, make the water boil like a pot, while the sound 
produced by the collision was equal to the report of a large piece of 
ordnance. 
In 1829, when about the latitude and longitude of the Banks of New¬ 
foundland, the writer also witnessed the singular action of a large fish, 
which he has never seen or heard described since. It occurred in the 
broad daylight of an afternoon in May or June, the wind blowing strong 
from the south-west, and ship closehauled on larboard tack. Most of 
the crew were aloft double-reefing the foretopsail, when one of the men 
hailed the quarter-deck, that there were breakers to leeward; on looking 
with the glass in that direction, the writer saw the spray flying exactly 
