a
spouting fish with a horizontal tail. There you have him. However contracted,
that definition is the result of expanded meditation. A walrus spouts much like
a whale, but the walrus is not a fish, because he is amphibious. But the last
term of the definition is still more cogent, as coupled with the first. Almost
any one must have noticed that all the fish familiar to landsmen have not a
flat, but a vertical, or up-and-down tail. Whereas, among spouting fish the
tail, though it may be similarly shaped, invariably assumes a horizontal
position.
    By the above definition of what a whale is, I do by no means exclude from
the leviathanic brotherhood any sea-creature hitherto identified with the whale
by the best-informed Nantucketers; nor, on the other hand, link with it any fish
hitherto authoritatively regarded as alien.2 Hence, all the smaller, spouting,
and horizontal-tailed fish must be included in this ground-plan of Cetology.
Now, then, come the grand divisions of the entire whale host.
    First: According to magnitude I divide the whales into three primary BOOKS
(subdivisible into CHAPTERS), and these shall comprehend them all, both small
and large.
    I. The FOLIO WHALE; II. the OCTAVO WHALE; III. the DUODECIMO WHALE.
    As the type of the FOLIO I present the Sperm Whale; of the OCTAVO, the
Grampus; of the DUODECIMO, the Porpoise.
    FOLIOS. Among these I here include the following chapters: - I. the Sperm
Whale; II. the Right Whale; III. the Fin-back Whale; IV. the Hump-backed Whale;
V. the Razor-back Whale; VI. the Sulphur-bottom Whale.
    BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER I. (Sperm Whale). - This whale, among the English
of old vaguely known as the Trumpa whale, and the Physeter whale, and the
Anvil-headed whale, is the present Cachalot of the French, and the Pottsfisch of
the Germans, and the Macrocephalus of the Long Words. He is, without doubt, the
largest inhabitant of the globe; the most formidable of all whales to encounter;
the most majestic in aspect; and lastly, by far the most valuable in commerce;
he being the only creature from which that valuable substance, spermaceti, is
obtained. All his peculiarities will, in many other places, be enlarged upon. It
is chiefly with his name that I now have to do. Philologically considered, it is
absurd. Some centuries ago, when the