 draught of a
systematisation 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,
Linnæus 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 Linnæus's express edict, were still found dividing the
possession of the same seas with the leviathan.
    The grounds upon which Linnæus 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 naturæ 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, Linnæus has given you those items. But in brief, they
are those: 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
