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- 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 colour, 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 fishermen’s names for a few sorts.
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