o do
fish; they have no legs, nor have fish; but their implements of
locomotion are more like arms than fins. But whales do what no fish do:
they bring forth their young alive--they suckle them, and tend them with
the fondest affection in their youth. They have warm blood, and a
double circulation; and they breathe the atmospheric air by true lungs.
The tail of a fish is placed vertically, or up and down; that of a
whale, horizontally--that is to say, its broadest part is parallel with
the surface of the water. The tail of a large whale is upwards of 20
feet wide, and with a superficies of 100 square feet, and it is moved by
muscles of immense strength. This will give some idea of the terrific
force with which it can strike a boat. I have, indeed, heard of
instances where a whale has stove in a ship's bottom, and caused her to
founder, with little time for the crew to escape. Their progressive
movement is effected entirely by the tail; sometimes, when wishing to
advance leisurely, by an oblique lateral and downward impulse, first on
one side and then on the other, just as a boat is sent through the water
when sculled with an oar; but when rushing through the deep at their
greatest speed, they strike the water, now upwards and now downwards,
with a rapid motion and vast force. As whales breathe the atmospheric
air, they must come to the surface frequently for a fresh supply. They
have then to throw out the water which has got into their mouths when
feeding. This they do by closing a valve leading to the nasal passages,
and forcing it by means of air through the blow-hole placed in the upper
part of the head. It is this necessity of whales for breathing at the
surface which enables man to make them his prey, in spite of their
immense strength, while their spouts point out to him the place where
they are to be found.

The remarks I have made apply in common to the two chief sorts of
whales, but the Greenland whale is a very different animal from the
sperm whale, of which we were in search. The Greenland whale, (_Balaena
mysticetus_), is also called the common, true, or whale-bone whale. I
remember once, in a man-of-war, falling in with a dead whale in a
perfect calm. We towed it alongside, but so ignorant was everybody on
board of natural history, that no one knew where the whale-bone was to
be found. At the cost of great trouble, with a horrible odour to our
noses, we cut out a jaw-bone; which was perfectly