absurd. Some centuries ago, when the Sperm whale was almost wholly unknown in
his own proper individuality, and when his oil was only accidentally obtained
from the stranded fish; in those days spermaceti, it would seem, was popularly
supposed to be derived from a creature identical with the one then known in
England as the Greenland or Right whale. It was the idea also, that this same
spermaceti was that quickening humour of the Greenland whale which the first
syllable of the word literally expresses. In those times, also, spermaceti was
exceedingly scarce, not being used for light, but only as an ointment and
medicament. It was only to be had from the druggists as you nowadays buy an
ounce of rhubarb. When, as I opine, in the course of time, the true nature of
spermaceti became known, its original name was still retained by the dealers; no
doubt to enhance its value by a notion so strangely significant of its scarcity.
And so the appellation must at last have come to be bestowed upon the whale from
which this spermaceti was really derived.
    BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER II. (Right Whale). - In one respect this is the
most venerable of the leviathans, being the one first regularly hunted by man.
It yields the article commonly known as whalebone or baleen; and the oil
specially known as whale oil, an inferior article in commerce. Among the
fishermen, he is indiscriminately designated by all the following titles: The
Whale; the Greenland Whale; the Black Whale; the Great Whale; the True Whale;
the Right Whale. There is a deal of obscurity concerning the identity of the
species thus multitudinously baptized. What then is the whale, which I include
in the second species of my Folios? It is the Great Mysticetus of the English
naturalists; the Greenland Whale of the English whalemen; the Baleine Ordinaire
of the French whalemen; the Growlands Walfisch of the Swedes. It is the whale
which for more than two centuries past has been hunted by the Dutch and English
in the Arctic seas; it is the whale which the American fishermen have long
pursued in the Indian Ocean, on the Brazil Banks, on the Nor'-West Coast, and
various other parts of the world, designated by them Right Whale
Cruising-Grounds.
    Some pretend to see a difference between the Greenland whale of the English
and the Right whale of the Americans. But they precisely agree 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