Imagery of Milton. Whence Derived. Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool His mighty stature: on each hand the flames, Driven backward, slope their pointing spires, and rolled In billows, leave in the midst a horrid vale. Then, with expanded wings, he takes his flight Aloft incumbent on the dusky air, That felt unusual weight. E Physiology of the Right Whale. CHAPTER IV. Not a Fish. NEW ZEALAND CRUISING GROUND. Oh, the whale is free, of the boundless sea; He sinks to rest on the billow's breast, Is music to lull him to sleep : And he scatters the spray in his boisterous play, HE recent capture of one right whale, get THE ting fast to another, and pursuit of several more, and the sight of them blowing all around, close at hand and at a distance, naturally puts one upon inquiring into the habits and resorts of this great sea-monster. It is of the class mammalia, order cetacea, warm-blooded, bringing forth its young alive, generally one at a time, and giving them suck. It is not, therefore, a fish, is without scales, breathes the air. through enormous lungs, not gills, and respires by what is called its spout or blow-holes, a kind of nostrils, or, in other words, two apertures Points of Difference between the Right and Sperm Whale. situated on the after part of its head and neck, through which is forcibly expelled all the water taken into the mouth in the act of feeding and breathing, and all the warm air and vapor of the lungs. The form of the spout serves to distinguish at a distance the kind of whale, whether right whale (Balæna mysticetus) or sperm (makrocephalus). The right whale, having two large orifices on the top of the back part of its head as it lies along in the water, the spout of vapor and water ejected is forced up perpendicularly till its power is spent, and it begins to fall over on both sides, looking then, at a distance, in shape like a Gothic elm parted into two branches. This can be easily perceived when the whale is either coming directly toward or going directly off from the ship, the jets d'eau being sometimes thirty or even fifty feet high. The sperm whale, on the other hand, has but one blowhole, and that a little on one side or corner of its head, from which the ejected stream of breath issues a little obliquely, and not straight up, as in the right whale. Being only the confined air of the lungs, and condensed into a white mist, it vanishes instantly. Propellers and Instruments of Defense. Measurements. Its propellers and means of defense are two fins, planted a little behind the head on each side, and the flukes of its tail, also, with which it sculls and attempts to strike its enemy. The juncture of these flukes with the main body of the whale is comparatively small, and a skillful whaler always tries to cut the tendons, like a hamstring, with his spade when the whale is violent. If successful in this, the flukes will be still, and the danger of approaching the whale greatly diminished. The natural working of them on their joints by the waves, after the animal is dead, will always carry the carcass directly to windward. Of one that I have measured, the fins were five feet long each, and the flukes twelve feet across, horizontally. Of another the body was thirty-nine feet long and nineteen feet round, the head seven feet from its tip to the spout holes, three feet wide just behind the same, and three feet from the upper outside superficies to the roof of the mouth inside, making its entire head, with the mouth closed, seven feet in diameter, or twenty-one feet round. The length of another, which I have exactly measured, a sperm whale, was fifty-nine feet, and thirty round. The Ear. The Eye. The Lips. The Food. The ear of the whale is extremely small, and so hidden, like a mole's, that you would not find it without diligent search. Still the crea ture is thought by seamen to be quick of hearing as well as sharp of sight. The organ for the latter sense is about as large as the eye of an ox. The head of a right whale, when his mouth is open in feeding, or when he breaches, as I have sometimes seen him do quite out of water, is a most uncouth and formidable sight. It looks at a little distance like the black, rugged mouth of one of those lava caverns a traveler meets with on the Island of Hawaii. The huge lips close from below upward, and shut in, when the monster has got a mouthful, upon immense whalebone cheeks, like the great valve of a mammoth bellows, or the water gates of a canal lock. his The sole living of this vast animal is thought to be upon a substance which I hear universally called by whalemen "right whale feed" (medúsæ). It appears in the water like little red seeds of the size of mustard, which is intrapped by the hair that fringes the leaves of whalebone, as the whale swims along with mouth open. It is, in fact, a little red shrimp, |