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1Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost in its unshored, harbourless immensities. Ere
2that come to pass; ere the Pequod's weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls of the leviathan; at the
3outset it is but well to attend to a matter almost indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of the more
4special leviathanic revelations and allusions of all sorts which are to follow. It is some systematized exhibition of
5the whale in his broad genera, that I would now fain put before you. Yet is it no easy task. The classification of the
6constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here essayed. Listen to what the best and latest authorities have laid down.
7"No branch of Zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled Cetology," says Captain Scoresby, A.D. 1820. "It is
8not my intention, were it in my power, to enter into the inquiry as to the true method of dividing the cetacea into
9groups and families. Utter confusion exists among the historians of this animal" (sperm whale), says Surgeon Beale, A.D.
101839. "Unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable waters." "Impenetrable veil covering our knowledge of the
11cetacea." "A field strewn with thorns." "All these incomplete indications but serve to torture us naturalists." Thus
12speak of the whale, the great Cuvier, and John Hunter, and Lesson, those lights of zoology and anatomy. Nevertheless,
13though of real knowledge there be little, yet of books there are a plenty; and so in some small degree, with cetology,
14or the science of whales. Many are the men, small and great, old and new, landsmen and seamen, who have at large or in
15little, written of the whale. Run over a few:--The Authors of the Bible; Aristotle; Pliny; Aldrovandi; Sir Thomas
16Browne; Gesner; Ray; Linnæus; Rondeletius; Willoughby; Green; Artedi; Sibbald; Brisson; Marten; Lacépède; Bonneterre;
17Desmarest; Baron Cuvier; Frederick Cuvier; John Hunter; Owen; Scoresby; Beale; Bennett; J. Ross Browne; the Author of
18Miriam Coffin; Olmstead; and the Rev. T. Cheever. But to what ultimate generalizing purpose all these have written, the
19above cited extracts will show. Of the names in this list of whale authors, only those following Owen ever saw living
20whales; and but one of them was a real professional harpooneer and whaleman. I mean Captain Scoresby. On the separate
21subject of the Greenland or right-whale, he is the best existing authority. But Scoresby knew nothing and says nothing
22of the great sperm whale, compared with which the Greenland whale is almost unworthy mentioning. And here be it said,
23that the Greenland whale is an usurper upon the throne of the seas. He is not even by any means the largest of the
24whales. Yet, owing to the long priority of his claims, and the profound ignorance which, till some seventy years back,
25invested the then fabulous or utterly unknown sperm-whale, and which ignorance to this present day still reigns in all
26but some few scientific retreats and whale-ports; this usurpation has been every way complete. Reference to nearly all
27the leviathanic allusions in the great poets of past days, will satisfy you that the Greenland whale, without one rival,
28was to them the monarch of the seas. But the time has at last come for a new proclamation. This is Charing Cross; hear
29ye! good people all,--the Greenland whale is deposed,--the great sperm whale now reigneth! There are only two books in
30being which at all pretend to put the living sperm whale before you, and at the same time, in the remotest degree
31succeed in the attempt. Those books are Beale's and Bennett's; both in their time surgeons to English South-Sea
32whale-ships, and both exact and reliable men. The original matter touching the sperm whale to be found in their volumes
33is necessarily small; but so far as it goes, it is of excellent quality, though mostly confined to scientific
34description. As yet, however, the sperm whale, scientific or poetic, lives not complete in any literature. Far above all
35other hunted whales, his is an unwritten life. Now the various species of whales need some sort of popular comprehensive
36classification, if only an easy outline one for the present, hereafter to be filled in all its departments by subsequent
37laborers. As no better man advances to take this matter in hand, I hereupon offer my own poor endeavors. I promise
38nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty. I
39shall not pretend to a minute anatomical description of the various species, or--in this place at least--to much of any
40description. My object here is simply to project the draught of a systematization of cetology. I am the architect, not
41the builder. But it is a ponderous task; no ordinary letter-sorter in the Post-Office is equal to it. To grope down into
42the bottom of the sea after them; to have one's hands among the unspeakable foundations, ribs, and very pelvis of the
43world; this is a fearful thing. What am I that I should essay to hook the nose of this leviathan! The awful tauntings in
44Job might well appal me. Will he (the leviathan) make a covenant with thee? Behold the hope of him is vain! But I have
45swam through libraries and sailed through oceans; I have had to do with whales with these visible hands; I am in
46earnest; and I will try. There are some preliminaries to settle. First: The uncertain, unsettled condition of this
47science of Cetology is in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters it still remains a moot point
48whether a whale be a fish. In his System of Nature, A.D. 1776, Linnæus declares, "I hereby separate the whales from the
49fish." But of my own knowledge, I know that down to the year 1850, sharks and shad, alewives and herring, against
50Linnæus's express edict, were still found dividing the possession of the same seas with the Leviathan. The grounds upon
51which Linnæus would fain have banished the whales from the waters, he states as follows: "On account of their warm
52bilocular heart, their lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow ears, penem intrantem feminam mammis lactantem," and
53finally, "ex lege naturæ jure meritoque." I submitted all this to my friends Simeon Macey and Charley Coffin, of
54Nantucket, both messmates of mine in a certain voyage, and they united in the opinion that the reasons set forth were
55altogether insufficient. Charley profanely hinted they were humbug. Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the
56good old fashioned ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me. This fundamental thing settled,
57the next point is, in what internal respect does the whale differ from other fish. Above, Linnæus has given you those
58items. But in brief, they are these: lungs and warm blood; whereas, all other fish are lungless and cold blooded. Next:
59how shall we define the whale, by his obvious externals, so as conspicuously to label him for all time to come? To be
60short, then, a whale is a spouting fish with a horizontal tail. There you have him. However contracted, that definition
61is the result of expanded meditation. A walrus spouts much like a whale, but the walrus is not a fish, because he is
62amphibious. But the last term of the definition is still more cogent, as coupled with the first. Almost any one must
63have noticed that all the fish familiar to landsmen have not a flat, but a vertical, or up-and-down tail. Whereas, among
64spouting fish the tail, though it may be similarly shaped, invariably assumes a horizontal position. By the above
65definition of what a whale is, I do by no means exclude from the leviathanic brotherhood any sea creature hitherto
66identified with the whale by the best informed Nantucketers; nor, on the other hand, link with it any fish hitherto
67authoritatively regarded as alien. Hence, all the smaller, spouting, and horizontal tailed fish must be included in this
68ground-plan of Cetology. Now, then, come the grand divisions of the entire whale host. *I am aware that down to the
69present time, the fish styled Lamatins and Dugongs (Pig-fish and Sow-fish of the Coffins of Nantucket) are included by
70many naturalists among the whales. But as these pig-fish are a noisy, contemptible set, mostly lurking in the mouths of
71rivers, and feeding on wet hay, and especially as they do not spout, I deny their credentials as whales; and have
72presented them with their passports to quit the Kingdom of Cetology. First: According to magnitude I divide the whales
73into three primary BOOKS (subdivisible into CHAPTERS), and these shall comprehend them all, both small and large. I. THE
74FOLIO WHALE; II. the OCTAVO WHALE; III. the DUODECIMO WHALE.
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