whalemen calculate the creature’s age, as the age of an oak by its circular rings. Though the certainty of this criterion is far from demonstrable, yet it has the savor of analogical probability. At any rate, if we yield to it, we must grant a far greater age to the Right Whale than at first glance will seem reasonable.
In old times, there seem to have prevailed the most curious fancies concerning these blinds.
One voyager in Purchas calls them the wondrous “whiskers” inside of the whale’s mouth; another, “hogs’ bristles”; a third old gentleman in Hackluyt uses the following elegant language:
“There are about two hundred and fifty fins growing on each side of his upper chop , which arch over his tongue on each side of his mouth.”
As everyone knows, these same “hogs’ bristles,” “fins,” “whiskers,” “blinds,” or whatever you please, furnish to the ladies their busks and other stiffening contrivances.
But in this particular, the demand has long been on the decline. It was in Queen Anne’s time that the bone was in its glory, the farthingale being then all the fashion. And as those ancient dames moved about gaily, though in the jaws of the whale, as you may say; even so, in a shower, with the like thoughtlessness, do we nowadays fly under the same jaws for protection; the umbrella being a tent spread over the same bone.
But now forget all about blinds and whiskers for a moment, and, standing in the Right Whale’s mouth, look around you afresh. Seeing all these colonnades of bone so methodically ranged about, would you not think you were inside of the great Haarlem organ, and gazing upon its thousand pipes?