CHAPTER 32
Cetology
Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost
in its unshored harborless immensities. Ere that come to pass; ere the
Pequod’s weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls of the
leviathan; at the outset it is but well to attend to a matter almost
indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of the more special
leviathanic revelations and allusions of all sorts which are to follow.
It is some systematized exhibition of the whale in his broad genera, that I
would now fain put before you. Yet is it no easy task. The classification of
the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed. Listen to what the
best and latest authorities have laid down.
“No branch of Zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled
Cetology,”
says Captain Scoresby, A.D. 1820.
“It is not my intention, were it in my power, to enter into the inquiry as to
the true method of dividing the cetacea into groups and families…. Utter
confusion exists among the historians of this animal” (sperm whale), says
Surgeon Beale, A.D. 1839.
“Unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable waters.”
“Impenetrable veil covering our knowledge of the cetacea.”
“A field strewn with thorns.” “All these incomplete indications
but serve to torture us naturalists.”
Thus speak of the whale, the great Cuvier, and John Hunter, and Lesson,
those lights of zoology and anatomy. Nevertheless, though of real
knowledge there be little, yet of books there are a plenty; and so in some
small degree, with cetology, or the science of whales. Many are the men,
small and great, old and new, landsmen and seamen, who have at large or in
little, written of the whale.
Run over a few:— The Authors of the Bible; Aristotle; Pliny; Aldrovandi;
Sir Thomas Browne; Gesner; Ray; Linnaeus; Rondeletius; Willoughby;
Green; Artedi; Sibbald; Brisson; Marten; Lacepede; Bonneterre; Desmarest;
Baron Cuvier; Frederick Cuvier; John Hunter; Owen; Scoresby; Beale;
Bennett; J. Ross Browne; the Author of Miriam Coffin; Olmstead; and the
Rev. T. Cheever. But to what ultimate generalizing purpose all these have
written, the above cited extracts will show.
Of the names in this list of whale authors only those following Owen
ever saw living whales; and but one of them was a real professional
harpooneer and whaleman. I mean Captain Scoresby. On the separate
subject of the Greenland or right-whale, he is the best existing authority.
But Scoresby knew nothing and says nothing of the great sperm whale,
compared with which the Greenland whale is almost unworthy mentioning.
And here be 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 and 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 the 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 complete 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
comprehensive classification, if only an easy outline one for the present,
hereafter to be filled in all-outward its departments by subsequent laborers.
As no better man advances to take this matter in hand, I hereupon offer my
own poor endeavors. 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 description of the various species,
or—in this space at least— to much of any description. My object here is
simply to project the draught of a systematization 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 tauntings in Job might well appal me. “Will he
(the leviathan) make a covenant with thee? Behold the hope of him is vain!
But I have swam through libraries and sailed through oceans; I have had to
do with whales with these visible hands; I am in earnest; and I will try.
There are some preliminaries to settle.
First: The uncertain, unsettled condition of this science of Cetology is in
the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters it still remains a
moot point whether a whale be a fish. In his System of Nature, A.D. 1776,
Linnaeus declares, “I hereby separate the whales from the fish.” But of my
own knowledge, I know that down to the year 1850, sharks and shad,
alewives and herring, against Linnaeus’s express edict, were still found
dividing the possession of the same seas with the Leviathan.
The grounds upon which Linnaeus would fain have banished the whales
from the waters, he states as follows: “On account of their warm bilocular
heart, their lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow ears, penem intrantem
feminam mammis lactantem,” and finally, “ex lege naturae jure meritoque.”
I submitted all this to my friends Simeon Macey and Charley Coffin, of
Nantucket, both messmates of mine in a certain voyage, and they united in
the opinion that the reasons set forth were altogether insufficient. Charley
profanely hinted they were humbug.
Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned
ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me. This
fundamental thing settled, the next point is, in what internal respect does the
whale differ from other fish. Above, Linnaeus has given you those items.
But in brief they are these: lungs and warm blood; whereas, all other fish
are lungless and cold blooded.
Next: how shall we define the whale, by his obvious externals, so as
conspicuously to label him for all time to come. To be short, then, a whale
is a spouting fish with a horizontal tail. There you have him. However
contracted, that definition is the result of expanded meditation. A walrus
spouts much like a whale, but the walrus is not a fish, because he is
amphibious. But the last term of the definition is still more cogent, as
coupled with the first. Almost any one must have noticed that all the fish
familiar to landsmen have not a flat, but a vertical, or up-and-down tail.
Whereas, among spouting fish the tail, though it may be similarly shaped,
invariably assumes a horizontal position.
By the above definition of what a whale is, I do by no means exclude
from the leviathanic brotherhood any sea creature hitherto identified with
the whale by the best informed Nantucketers; nor, on the other hand, link
with it any fish hitherto authoritatively regarded as alien.* Hence, all the
smaller, spouting and horizontal tailed fish must be included in this ground-
plan of Cetology.
Now, then, come the grand divisions of the entire whale host.
*I am aware that down to the present time, the fish styled Lamatins and
Dugongs (Pig-fish and Sow-fish of the Coffins of Nantucket) are included
by many naturalists among the whales. But as these pig-fish are a noisy,
contemptible set, mostly lurking in the mouths of rivers, and feeding on wet
hay, and especially as they do not spout, I deny their credentials as whales;
and have presented them with their passports to quit the Kingdom of
Cetology.
First: According to magnitude I divide the whales into three primary
BOOKS
(subdivisible into CHAPTERS), and these shall comprehend them all,
both small and large.
I. THE FOLIO WHALE; II. the OCTAVO WHALE; III. the
DUODECIMO WHALE.
As the type of the FOLIO I present the Sperm Whale; of the OCTAVO,
the Grampus; of the DUODECIMO, the Porpoise.
FOLIOS. Among these I here include the following chapters:— I. The
Sperm Whale; II. the Right Whale; III. the Fin Back Whale; IV. the
Humpbacked Whale; V. the Razor Back Whale; VI. the Sulphur Bottom
Whale.
BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER I. (Sperm Whale).—This whale,
among the English of old vaguely known as the Trumpa whale and
the Physeter whale, and the Anvil Headed whale, is the present
Cachalot of the French, and the Pottsfich of the Germans, and the
Macrocephalus of the Long Words. He is, without doubt, the largest
inhabitant of the globe; the most formidable of all whales to
encounter; the most majestic in aspect; and lastly, by far the most
valuable in commerce; he being the only creature from which that
valuable substance, spermaceti, is obtained. All his peculiarities
will, in many other places, be enlarged upon. It is chiefly with his
name that I now have to do.
Philologically considered, it is absurd. Some centuries ago, when
the Sperm whale was almost wholly unknown in his own proper
individuality, and when his oil was only accidentally obtained from
the stranded fish; in those days spermaceti, it would seem, was
popularly supposed to be derived from a creature identical with the
one then known in England as the Greenland or Right Whale.
It was the idea also, that this same spermaceti was that
quickening humor of the Greenland Whale which the first syllable
of the word literally expresses.
In those times, also, spermaceti was exceedingly scarce, not
being used for light, but only as an ointment and medicament. It
was only to be had from the druggists as you nowadays buy an
ounce of rhubarb. When, as I opine, in the course of time, the true
nature of spermaceti became known, its original name was still
retained by the dealers; no doubt to enhance its value by a notion so
strangely significant of its scarcity. And so the appellation must at
last have come to be bestowed upon the whale from which this
spermaceti was really derived.
BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER II. (Right Whale).—In one respect
this is the most venerable of the leviathans, being the one first
regularly hunted by man. It yields the article commonly known as
whalebone or baleen; and the oil specially known as “whale oil,” an
inferior article in commerce. Among the fishermen, he is
indiscriminately designated by all the following titles: The Whale;
the Greenland Whale; the Black Whale; the Great Whale; the True
Whale; the Right Whale. There is a deal of obscurity concerning
the Identity of the species thus multitudinously baptized. What then
is the whale, which I include in the second species of my Folios? It
is the Great Mysticetus of the English naturalists; the Greenland
Whale of the English Whalemen; the Baliene Ordinaire of the
French whalemen; the Growlands Walfish of the Swedes. It is the
whale which for more than two centuries past has been hunted by
the Dutch and English in the Arctic seas; it is the whale which the
American fishermen have long pursued in the Indian ocean, on the
Brazil Banks, on the Nor’ West Coast, and various other parts of the
world, designated by them Right Whale Cruising Grounds.
Some pretend to see a difference between the Greenland whale of the
English and the right whale of the Americans. But they precisely agree in
all their grand features; nor has there yet been presented a single
determinate fact upon which to ground a radical distinction. It is by endless
subdivisions based upon the most inconclusive differences, that some
departments of natural history become so repellingly intricate. The right
whale will be elsewhere treated of at some length, with reference to
elucidating the sperm whale.
BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER III. (Fin-Back).—Under this head I
reckon a monster which, by the various names of Fin-Back, Tall-
Spout, and Long-John, has been seen almost in every sea and is
commonly the whale whose distant jet is so often descried by
passengers crossing the Atlantic, in the New York packet-tracks. In
the length he attains, and in his baleen, the Fin-back resembles the
right whale, but is of a less portly girth, and a lighter color,
approaching to olive. His great lips present a cable-like aspect,
formed by the intertwisting, slanting folds of large wrinkles. His
grand distinguishing feature, the fin, from which he derives his
name, is often a conspicuous object. This fin is some three or four
feet long, growing vertically from the hinder part of the back, of an
angular shape, and with a very sharp pointed end. Even if not the
slightest other part of the creature be visible, this isolated fin will,
at times, be seen plainly projecting from the surface. When the sea
is moderately calm, and slightly marked with spherical ripples, and
this gnomon-like fin stands up and casts shadows upon the
wrinkled surface, it may well be supposed that the watery circle
surrounding it somewhat resembles a dial, with its style and wavy
hour-lines graved on it. On that Ahaz-dial the shadow often goes
back. The Fin-Back is not gregarious. He seems a whale-hater, as
some men are man-haters. Very shy; always going solitary;
unexpectedly rising to the surface in the remotest and most sullen
waters; his straight and single lofty jet rising like a tall
misanthropic spear upon a barren plain; gifted with such wondrous
power and velocity in swimming, as to defy all present pursuit
from man; this leviathan seems the banished and unconquerable
Cain of his race, bearing for his mark that style upon his back.
From having the baleen in his mouth, the Fin-Back is sometimes
included with the right whale, among a theoretic species
denominated Whalebone whales, that is, whales with baleen. Of
these so-called Whalebone whales, there would seem to be several
varieties, most of which, however, are little known. Broad-nosed
whales and beaked whales; pike-headed whales; bunched whales;
under-jawed whales and rostrated whales, are the fisherman’s
names for a few sorts.
In connexion with this appellative of “Whalebone whales,” it is of great
importance to mention, that however such a nomenclature may be
convenient in facilitating allusions to some kind of whales, yet it is in vain
to attempt a clear classification of the Leviathan, founded upon either his
baleen, or hump, or fin, or teeth; notwithstanding that those marked parts or
features very obviously seem better adapted to afford the basis for a regular
system of Cetology than any other detached bodily distinctions, which the
whale, in his kinds, presents. How then? The baleen, hump, back-fin, and
teeth; these are things whose peculiarities are indiscriminately dispersed
among all sorts of whales, without any regard to what may be the nature of
their structure in other and more essential particulars. Thus, the sperm
whale and the humpbacked whale, each has a hump; but there the similitude
ceases. Then this same humpbacked whale and the Greenland whale, each
of these has baleen; but there again the similitude ceases. And it is just the
same with the other parts above mentioned. In various sorts of whales, they
form such irregular combinations; or, in the case of any one of them
detached, such an irregular isolation; as utterly to defy all general
methodization formed upon such a basis. On this rock every one of the
whale-naturalists has split.
But it may possibly be conceived that, in the internal parts of the whale,
in his anatomy—there, at least, we shall be able to hit the right
classification.
Nay; what thing, for example, is there in the Greenland whale’s anatomy
more striking than his baleen? Yet we have seen that by his baleen it is
impossible correctly to classify the Greenland whale. And if you descend
into the bowels of the various leviathans, why there you will not find
distinctions a fiftieth part as available to the systematizer as those external
ones already enumerated. What then remains? nothing but to take hold of
the whales bodily, in their entire liberal volume, and boldly sort them that
way. And this is the Bibliographical system here adopted; and it is the only
one that can possibly succeed, for it alone is practicable. To proceed.
BOOK I. (Folio) CHAPTER IV. (Hump Back).—This whale is
often seen on the northern American coast. He has been frequently
captured there, and towed into harbor. He has a great pack on him
like a peddler; or you might call him the Elephant and Castle
whale. At any rate, the popular name for him does not sufficiently
distinguish him, since the sperm whale also has a hump though a
smaller one. His oil is not very valuable. He has baleen. He is the
most gamesome and light-hearted of all the whales, making more
gay foam and white water generally than any other of them.
BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER V. ( Razor Back).—Of this whale
little is known but his name. I have seen him at a distance off Cape
Horn. Of a retiring nature, he eludes both hunters and philosophers.
Though no coward, he has never yet shown any part of him but his
back, which rises in a long sharp ridge. Let him go. I know little
more of him, nor does anybody else.
BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER VI. (Sulphur Bottom).—Another
retiring gentleman, with a brimstone belly, doubtless got by
scraping along the Tartarian tiles in some of his profounder divings.
He is seldom seen; at least I have never seen him except in the
remoter southern seas, and then always at too great a distance to
study his countenance. He is never chased; he would run away with
rope-walks of line. Prodigies are told of him. Adieu, Sulphur
Bottom! I can say nothing more that is true of ye, nor can the oldest
Nantucketer.
Thus ends BOOK I. (Folio), and now begins BOOK II. (Octavo).
OCTAVOES.* These embrace the whales of middling magnitude, among
which at present may be numbered:—I., the Grampus; II., the Black Fish;
III., the Narwhale; IV., the Thrasher; V., the Killer.
*Why this book of whales is not denominated the Quarto is very plain.
Because, while the whales of this order, though smaller than those of the
former order, nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness to them in figure,
yet the bookbinder’s Quarto volume in its dimensioned form does not
preserve the shape of the Folio volume, but the Octavo volume does.
BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER I. (Grampus).—Though this fish,
whose loud sonorous breathing, or rather blowing, has furnished a
proverb to landsmen, is so well known a denizen of the deep, yet is
he not popularly classed among whales. But possessing all the
grand distinctive features of the leviathan, most naturalists have
recognised him for one. He is of moderate octavo size, varying
from fifteen to twenty-five feet in length, and of corresponding
dimensions round the waist. He swims in herds; he is never
regularly hunted, though his oil is considerable in quantity, and
pretty good for light. By some fishermen his approach is regarded
as premonitory of the advance of the great sperm whale.
BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER II. (Black Fish).—I give the
popular fishermen’s names for all these fish, for generally they are
the best. Where any name happens to be vague or inexpressive, I
shall say so, and suggest another. I do so now touching the Black
Fish, so called because blackness is the rule among almost all
whales. So, call him the Hyena Whale, if you please. His voracity
is well known and from the circumstance that the inner angles of
his lips are curved upwards, he carries an everlasting
Mephistophelean grin on his face.
This whale averages some sixteen or eighteen feet in length. He
is found in almost all latitudes. He has a peculiar way of showing
his dorsal hooked fin in swimming, which looks something like a
Roman nose. When not more profitably employed, the sperm whale
hunters sometimes capture the Hyena whale, to keep up the supply
of cheap oil for domestic employment— as some frugal
housekeepers, in the absence of company, and quite alone by
themselves, burn unsavory tallow instead of odorous wax. Though
their blubber is very thin, some of these whales will yield you
upwards of thirty gallons of oil.
BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER III. (Narwhale), that is, Nostril
whale.— Another instance of a curiously named whale, so named I
suppose from his peculiar horn being originally mistaken for a
peaked nose. The creature is some sixteen feet in length, while its
horn averages five feet, though some exceed ten, and even attain to
fifteen feet. Strictly speaking, this horn is but a lengthened tusk,
growing out from the jaw in a line a little depressed from the
horizontal. But it is only found on the sinister side, which has an ill
effect, giving its owner something analogous to the aspect of a
clumsy left-handed man.
What precise purpose this ivory horn or lance answers, it would
be hard to say.
It does not seem to be used like the blade of the sword-fish and
bill-fish; though some sailors tell me that the Narwhale employs it
for a rake in turning over the bottom of the sea for food. Charley
Coffin said it was used for an ice-piercer; for the Narwhale, rising
to the surface of the Polar Sea, and finding it sheeted with ice,
thrusts his horn up, and so breaks through. But you cannot prove
either of these surmises to be correct. My own opinion is, that
however this one-sided horn may really be used by the Narwhale—
however that may be—it would certainly be very convenient to him
for a folder in reading pamphlets. The Narwhale I have heard called
the Tusked whale, the Horned whale, and the Unicorn whale. He is
certainly a curious example of the Unicornism to be found in
almost every kingdom of animated nature. From certain cloistered
old authors I have gathered that this same sea-unicorn’s horn was in
ancient days regarded as the great antidote against poison, and as
such, preparations of it brought immense prices. It was also
distilled to a volatile salts for fainting ladies the same way that the
horns of the male deer are manufactured into hartshorn. Originally
it was in itself accounted an object of great curiosity. Black Letter
tells me that Sir Martin Frobisher on his return from that voyage,
when Queen Bess did gallantly wave her jewelled hand to him
from a window of Greenwich Palace, as his bold ship sailed down
the Thames; “when Sir Martin returned from that voyage,” saith
Black Letter, “on bended knees he presented to her highness a
prodigious long horn of the Narwhale, which for a long period after
hung in the castle at Windsor.” An Irish author avers that the Earl of
Leicester, on bended knees, did likewise present to her highness
another horn, pertaining to a land beast of the unicorn nature.
The Narwhale has a very picturesque, leopard-like look, being of a milk-
white ground color, dotted with round and oblong spots of black. His oil is
very superior, clear and fine; but there is little of it, and he is seldom
hunted.
He is mostly found in the circumpolar seas.
BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER IV. (Killer).—Of this whale little
is precisely known to the Nantucketer, and nothing at all to the
professed naturalists. From what I have seen of him at a distance, I
should say that he was about the bigness of a grampus. He is very
savage—a sort of Feegee fish. He sometimes takes the great Folio
whales by the lip, and hangs there like a leech, till the mighty brute
is worried to death. The Killer is never hunted. I never heard what
sort of oil he has. Exception might be taken to the name bestowed
upon this whale, on the ground of its indistinctness. For we are all
killers, on land and on sea; Bonapartes and Sharks included.
BOOK II. (Octavo), CHAPTER V. (Thrasher).—This gentleman is
famous for his tail which he uses for a ferule in thrashing his foes.
He mounts the Folio whale’s back, and as he swims, he works his
passage by flogging him; as some schoolmasters get along in the
world by a similar process. Still less is known of the Thrasher than
of the Killer. Both are outlaws, even in the lawless seas.
Thus ends BOOK II. (Octavo), and begins BOOK III, (Duodecimo.)
DUODECIMOES.—These include the smaller whales. I. The Huzza
Porpoise.
II. The Algerine Porpoise. III. The Mealy-mouthed Porpoise.
To those who have not chanced specially to study the subject, it may
possibly seem strange, that fishes not commonly exceeding four or five feet
should be marshalled among WHALES—a word, which, in the popular
sense, always conveys an idea of hugeness. But the creatures set down
above as Duodecimoes are infallibly whales, by the terms of my definition
of what a whale is—i.e. a spouting fish, with a horizontal tail.
BOOK III. (Duodecimo), CHAPTER 1. (Huzza Porpoise).—This is
the common porpoise found almost all over the globe. The name is
of my own bestowal; for there are more than one sort of porpoises,
and something must be done to distinguish them. I call him thus,
because he always swims in hilarious shoals, which upon the broad
sea keep tossing themselves to heaven like caps in a Fourth-of-July
crowd. Their appearance is generally hailed with delight by the
mariner. Full of fine spirits, they invariably come from the breezy
billows to windward. They are the lads that always live before the
wind. They are accounted a lucky omen. If you yourself can
withstand three cheers at beholding these vivacious fish, then
heaven help ye; the spirit of godly gamesomeness is not in ye. A
well-fed, plump Huzza Porpoise will yield you one good gallon of
good oil. But the fine and delicate fluid extracted from his jaws is
exceedingly valuable. It is in request among jewellers and
watchmakers. Sailors put it on their hones. Porpoise meat is good
eating, you know. It may never have occurred to you that a
porpoise spouts. Indeed, his spout is so small that it is not very
readily discernible. But the next time you have a chance, watch
him; and you will then see the great Sperm whale himself in
miniature.
BOOK III. (Duodecimo), CHAPTER II. (Algerine Porpoise).—A
pirate. Very savage. He is only found, I think, in the Pacific. He is
somewhat larger than the Huzza Porpoise, but much of the same
general make. Provoke him, and he will buckle to a shark. I have
lowered for him many times, but never yet saw him captured.
BOOK III. (Duodecimo), CHAPTER III. (Mealy-mouthed
Porpoise).—The largest kind of Porpoise; and only found in the
Pacific, so far as it is known. The only English name, by which he
has hitherto been designated, is that of the fisher—Right-Whale
Porpoise, from the circumstance that he is chiefly found in the
vicinity of that Folio. In shape, he differs in some degree from the
Huzza Porpoise, being of a less rotund and jolly girth; indeed, he is
of quite a neat and gentleman-like figure. He has no fins on his
back (most other porpoises have), he has a lovely tail, and
sentimental Indian eyes of a hazel hue. But his mealy-mouth spoils
all. Though his entire back down to his side fins is of a deep sable,
yet a boundary line, distinct as the mark in a ship’s hull, called the
“bright waist,” that line streaks him from stem to stern, with two
separate colors, black above and white below. The white comprises
part of his head, and the whole of his mouth, which makes him
look as if he had just escaped from a felonious visit to a meal-bag.
A most mean and mealy aspect! His oil is much like that of the
common porpoise.
Beyond the DUODECIMO, this system does not proceed, inasmuch as
the Porpoise is the smallest of the whales. Above, you have all the
Leviathans of note. But there are a rabble of uncertain, fugitive, half-
fabulous whales, which, as an American whaleman, I know by reputation,
but not personally. I shall enumerate them by their fore-castle appellations;
for possibly such a list may be valuable to future investigators, who may
complete what I have here but begun.
If any of the following whales, shall hereafter be caught and marked,
then he can readily be incorporated into this System, according to his Folio,
Octavo, or Duodecimo magnitude:— The Bottle-Nose Whale; the Junk
Whale; the Pudding-Headed Whale; the Cape Whale; the Leading Whale;
the Cannon Whale; the Scragg Whale; the Coppered Whale; the Elephant
Whale; the Iceberg Whale; the Quog Whale; the Blue Whale; &c. From
Icelandic, Dutch, and old English authorities, there might be quoted other
lists of uncertain whales, blessed with all manner of uncouth names. But I
omit them as altogether obsolete; and can hardly help suspecting them for
mere sounds, full of Leviathanism, but signifying nothing.
Finally: It was stated at the outset, that this system would not be here,
and at once, perfected. You cannot but plainly see that I have kept my word.
But I now leave my cetological System standing thus unfinished, even as
the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the cranes still standing upon
the top of the uncompleted tower. For small erections may be finished by
their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to
posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is
but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash,
and Patience!
