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I am unable to deal with this puzzle myself, and I have not been able to find any naturalist or physiologist who can throw light on the matter. The toothed whales are nearer to the ancestral primitive whales than are the whalebone whales.
The blow-hole is closed by a stopper or valve, opening to let the air in or out, but closing to shut out the water. Some of the Whale family are enormous, and some are small. A large Sperm Whale may grow to be ninety feet long, and its weight would be nearly two hundred tons! This huge creature would look like a deep barge in the water. These Sperm Whales love to swim in herds, or schools.
"There she blows!" cried the man in the crow's nest, just as we shot from the side of the ship. There was no need to ask, "where away" this time. Another whale rose and spouted not more than three hundred yards off, and before we could speak a third fish rose in another direction, and we found ourselves in the middle, of what is called a "school of whales."
I didn't have no peace exceptin' times when I was to the top, lookin' out for spouters; then I'd get nigh about into the clouds that was allers a-hangin' down close to the sea mornin' and night, all kinds of colors, red an' purple an' white; and 'stead of thinkin' o' whales, I'd get my head full o' Simsbury, and get a precious knock with the butt end of a handspike when I come down, 'cause I'd never sighted a whale till arter they see'd it on deck.
The 6. we saw a very great Whale, and euery day we saw whales continually. The 19. of Iuly we fell into a great whirling and brustling of a tyde, setting to the Northwards: and sayling about halfe a league wee came into a very calme Sea, which bent to the Southsouthwest.
And yet, though herds of whales were seen by night, not one whaleman in a hundred would venture a lowering for them. You may think with what emotions, then, the seamen beheld this old Oriental perched aloft at such unusual hours; his turban and the moon, companions in one sky.
Get down a volume of "Lives of the Poets," and prove my point for yourself, by opening at any page. It was Boswell who set his own light, chatty and amusing gossip over against the wise, stately diction of Johnson, and allowed Goldsmith to say, "Dear Doctor, if you were to write a story about little fishes, you would make them talk like whales," and the mud ball has stuck.
As ashore, the ladies often cause the most terrible duels among their rival admirers; just so with the whales, who sometimes come to deadly battle, and all for love. They fence with their long lower jaws, sometimes locking them together, and so striving for the supremacy like elks that warringly interweave their antlers.
It'll take a week o' fair weather for the carpenter to make us all tight again and we ain't even sure of the weather. Then, there's the three whales alongside. We can't throw them away. The crew would have cause to complain. But this boy ought to have doctor's care." I agreed with him, but had nothing to offer. "I couldn't sail for the Plate now," he ruminated, "if I wanted to.
Were we a few degrees more southward, I would show you landscapes of rock and mountain of bays, and hillsides sprinkled with verdure of tumbling whales, and lazy fishermen, and distant cottages, and lagging sails such as would make a figure even in pages that the bright eye of lady might love to read." "And yet for most of this would you be indebted to the land.
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