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“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; Linnæus; Rondeletius; Willoughby; Green; Artedi; Sibbald; Brisson;
Marten; Lacépède; 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 or 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 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.
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