A natural Suggestion. Exterminating Warfare. emptied into the general circulation, and thus for a time supersedes the necessity of respiration. It may be that the accidental piercing, now and then, of the walls of this great penstock of arterial blood, by the harpoon or lance, has something to do with the whale's occasional sinking after being killed, a phenomenon not yet satisfactorily explained. Until within a few years this gigantic game has been every where so abundant that whalemen have used no means to keep their rich prizes from sinking; but when one has gone down worth $1500 or $2000, or even $3000, they have taken it as a whaleman's fortune, and have gone to capturing others instead. In some voyages they say more whales have been sunk than have been saved. The useless devastation thus caused among these huge denizens of the deep has been very great. One practical whaleman calculates the number of whales killed in one season on the northwest coast and Kamtschatka at 12,000. Would whalemen go provided with Indiarubber or bladder buoys, ready to be bent on to harpoons and darted into a whale's carcass as soon as "turned up," or when he is perceived Expedients of the Indian Whalemen of Oregon and Cape Cod. to be going into "his flurry," we are persuaded that many thousands of barrels of oil might be saved, and not a few poor voyages would be made good ones. According to Commander Wilkes's Narrative of the United States Exploring Squadron, the Indians of the northwest coast take quite a number of whales annually, by having their rude fish spears fastened to inflated seal-skin floats, four feet long and one and a half or two feet broad, that keep the whale on the top of the water, and allow him to fall a comparatively easy prey. The same thing used to be effected by the Indians of Cape Cod, having their fish spears fastened to blocks of wood, in lieu of which sperm whalemen now use what is called a "drag." Now that whales are getting scarce, we think it impossible but that Yankee sense and forehandedness will soon see to this, and go prepared against such disheartening catastrophes as losing their game by its sinking, after unsurpassed skill and daring have made it fairly their own. If owners knew how much might be saved by it, they would never let a ship go from port without buoys to hold up dead whales, and long hawsers to lay-to with by them in gales of wind. Losses by Sinking. Means of Prevention. The Commodore Preble has lost, in the course of this voyage, seven by sinking after they were "turned up," and three from alongside in rugged weather, because without a long and strong hawser to secure them by to windward while lying-to. Six of our boats were stove in one season on the northwest coast, some of the crew were badly hurt, and the men got so afraid of a whale, that some of them would hide away when the order was given to lower. The only cause I have ever heard assigned for the right whale's sinking so often, is having the air-vessel which Nature is thought to provide this animal with, pierced by the lance or harpoon. Any one can see that a few buoys fastened to them would counterweigh this tendency to sink. I have even heard of their being hauled up when out of sight by four boat's crews pulling upon the tow-lines that were fast to the harpoons buried in the sinking carcass. Till we know more of the natural history of the whale than we yet do, its sinking so apparently without law can not be certainly accounted for. One whaleman says that he has known a whale of the largest size, which, in cutting him in, proved to be a dry-skin, that is, A Frenchman's Ingenuity and End. Hint to Legislators. the blubber containing a milky fluid instead of oil, and yet the whale floated as light as a cork. Again, he has killed a whale with a single lance, and he sunk like a stone, and another has sunk after lancing a hundred times. An ingenious Frenchman, I am told, in these seas, once rigged swivels in the heads of his boats, and had bladders and other gear to float dead whales; but he succeeded with it all so poorly, that, in mortification and despair, when he put into one of the ports of New Zealand, he went out into the woods and shot himself with a brace of pistols through both his eyes. I think some quick-witted Yankee would do better to give his attention to experimenting in this line; and, even if the whales would not be killed or floated, he would not be such a fool as to blow his own brains out. It is a true saying of Massinger : Who kills himself t' avoid misery, fears it, And at the best shows a bastard valor ; which, forasmuch as the crime is becoming popular nowadays, it would not be amiss to put a stop to, by enacting a law, as they once did in ancient Rome, to expose the body of every suicide naked in the market-place after death. Notes in Physiology. The Right Whale's Head. CHAPTER V. THE WHALE'S PHYSIOLOGY AND NATURAL HISTORY. Spout! spout! spout! The waves are purling all about, Strangely wears a crest of red. See her lash the foaming main In her flurry and her pain. Take good heed, my hearts of oak, Lest her flukes, as she lies, Swiftly hurl you to the skies. But lo! her giant strength is broke. Slow she turns, as a mass of lead; The mighty mountain whale is dead.-Whaler's Song. HERE are some points in the whale's phys THE iology, and in the way of disposing of the blubber, not noted in previous chapters, which are so well described in parts of a sailor's yarn that I have found in a loose number of the Sailor's Magazine, of which most excellent periodical we have several on board, that I will take from it here and there, with corrections, what may be wanting to complete the integrity of our description. Although it is difficult to describe the head of a right whale without the |