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- 2026-01-23T15:41:01.929Z
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- 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, Linnæus 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 _Hump-backed Whale_; V. the _Razor Back Whale_; VI. the _Sulphur
Bottom Whale_.
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