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Updated: May 6, 2025
Besides these exceptional monsters, our bottleheads reach to forty feet, our California whales to forty-four, our hump-backs to fifty, and our razor-backs to sixty or seventy. True fish generally fall far short of these enormous dimensions, but some of the larger sharks attain almost equal size with the biggest cetaceans.
Generally these three whale-boats were employed simultaneously in the pursuit of cetaceans. But during the fishing season, we know, an additional crew, hired at the stations of New Zealand, came to the assistance of the "Pilgrim's" sailors. Now, in the present circumstances, the "Pilgrim" could only furnish the five sailors on board that is, enough to arm a single whale-boat.
"Oh!" exclaimed the Canadian, whose eyes hadn't left the ocean. "It's getting closer, it's coming into the Nautilus's waters!" Then, going on with his conversation: "You talk about sperm whales," he said, "as if they were little beasts! But there are stories of gigantic sperm whales. They're shrewd cetaceans. I hear that some will cover themselves with algae and fucus plants.
Megasthenes records the existence of a creature in the ocean, near Taprobane, with the aspect of a woman ; and Ælian, adopting and enlarging on his information, peoples the seas of Ceylon with fishes having the heads of lions, panthers, and rams, and, stranger still, cetaceans in the form of satyrs.
Viewed as reptiles, we have certainly nothing at all to come up to these; but our cetaceans, as a group, show an assemblage of species which could very favourably compete with the whole lot of Jurassic saurians at any cattle show. Indeed, if it came to tonnage, I believe a good blubbery right-whale could easily give points to any deinosaur that ever moved upon oolitic continents.
You may imagine that this does not produce a very active respiration, and that a tortoise would be puzzled to run at even a moderate trot. To be sure, when he has once filled his great lungs with air, he has enough for a long time. Most tortoises are aquatic, and, as divers, leave the cetaceans far behind.
The oil is in constant demand for delicate machinery, and Beluga leather, made from the tanned hide, is manufactured into a great variety of articles of necessity and luxury. In appearance these whales are the most attractive of all the cetaceans.
"The common man may still believe in fabulous comets crossing outer space, or in prehistoric monsters living at the earth's core, but astronomers and geologists don't swallow such fairy tales. It's the same with whalers. I've chased plenty of cetaceans, I've harpooned a good number, I've killed several.
"Correct, the prize is rightfully yours. But tell me, isn't that the noise cetaceans make when they spurt water from their blowholes?" "The very noise, sir, but this one's way louder. So there can be no mistake. There's definitely a whale lurking in our waters. With your permission, sir," the harpooner added, "tomorrow at daybreak we'll have words with it."
Cryptogamic vegetation would have the advantage over Phanerogamic; Hydrozoa over Corals; Crustacea over Insecta, and Amphipoda and Isopoda over the higher Crustacea; Cetaceans and Seals over the Primates; the civilization of the Esquimaux over that of the European.
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