--The Right (and wrong) Whale.
The largest of the Cetacea is the Right whale, of which--so persistently
is it hunted down--there will soon be but few Left. Some flippant jokist
has remarked that there is no Wrong whale, but this is all Oily Gammon.
There is a right and a wrong to everything--not excepting the leviathan
of the deep.
By the courtesy of the Fisheries, the planting of a harpoon in the
vitals of a Right whale gives the planter a pre-emption claim to it. If
subsequently appropriated by another party it becomes, so far as that
party is concerned, the Wrong whale, and on Trying the case its value
may be recovered in a court of law,--with Whaling costs.
The sperm whale, or cachalot, (genus _physeter_) is a rare visitor in
the higher latitudes. Now and then a solitary specimen is taken in the
Northern Atlantic, but the best place to catch a lot is on the Pacific
coast. It may be mentioned incidentally, as a curious meteorological
coincidence, that Whales and Waterspouts are invariably seen together,
and hence it was, (perhaps,) that the long-necked cloud pointed out by
HAMLET to POLONIUS, reminded that old Grampus of a Whale.
The favorite food of the great marine mammal of the Pacific is the
Squid, and as this little creature swarms in the vicinity of Hawaii, the
cachalot instinctively goes there at certain seasons to chew its Squid
by way of a Sandwich.
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