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 “Finback Whale”; IV , the “Humpbacked 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 Pottsfich 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 Sperm whale was almost wholly unknown in his own proper individuality, and when his oil was only accidentally obtained from the stranded fish; in those days spermaceti, it would seem, was popularly supposed to be derived from a creature identical with the one then known in England as the Greenland or Right Whale.
It was the idea also, that this same spermaceti was that quickening humor of the Greenland Whale which the first syllable of the word literally expresses.