 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 the 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.
    Now the various species of whales need some sort of popular comprehensive
classification, if only an easy outline one for the present, hereafter to be
filled in all its departments by subsequent labourers. As no better man advances
to take this matter in hand, I hereupon offer my own poor endeavours. I promise
nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that
very reason infallibly be faulty. I shall not pretend to a minute anatomical
description of the various species, or - in this place at least - to much of any
description. My object here is simply to project the
