 not give us Jonah looking out of that eye!
    Nor are the most conscientious compilations of Natural History for the
benefit of the young and tender, free from the same heinousness of mistake. Look
at that popular work Goldsmith's Animated Nature. In the abridged London edition
of 18O7, there are plates of an alleged whale and a narwhale. I do not wish to
seem inelegant, but this unsightly whale looks much like an amputated sow; and,
as for the narwhale, one glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in this
nineteenth century such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine upon any
intelligent public of schoolboys.
    Then, again, in 1825, Bernard Germain, Count de Lacépède, a great
naturalist, published a scientific systematised whale book, wherein are several
pictures of the different species of the leviathan. All these are not only
incorrect, but the picture of the Mysticetus or Greenland whale (that is to say,
the right whale), even Scoresby, a long-experienced man as touching that
species, declares not to have its counterpart in nature.
    But the placing of the cap-sheaf to all this blundering business was
reserved for the scientific Frederick Cuvier, brother to the famous Baron. In
1836, he published a Natural History of Whales, in which he gives what he calls
a picture of the sperm whale. Before showing that picture to any Nantucketer,
you had best provide for your summary retreat from Nantucket. In a word,
Frederick Cuvier's sperm whale is not a sperm whale, but a squash. Of course, he
never had the benefit of a whaling voyage (such men seldom have), but whence he
derived that picture, who can tell? Perhaps he got it as his scientific
predecessor in the same field, Desmarest, got one of his authentic abortions;
that is, from a Chinese drawing. And what sort of lively lads with the pencil
those Chinese are, many queer cups and saucers inform us.
    As for the sign-painters' whales seen in the streets hanging over the shops
of oil-dealers, what shall be said of them? They are generally Richard III.
whales, with dromedary humps, and very savage; breakfasting on three or four
sailor tarts, that is whale-boats full of mariners: their deformities
floundering in seas of blood and blue paint.
    But these manifold mistakes in depicting the whale are not so very
surprising after all. Consider! Most of the scientific drawings have been taken
from the stranded fish; and these are about as correct as a drawing of a wrecked
ship, with broken back
