{"id":"01KFNR86XBK1FRW03JYQKT0Q49","cid":"bafkreibjlxempecyhhjfrog4aykf5dkgfilymsrrl6g2bwhvedvhjv562m","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":5638,"extracted_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:01.928Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 0","source_file":"01KFNR0Z394A878Y5AQ63MQEM2","start_line":5579,"text":"\r\nAlready we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost\r\nin its unshored, harbourless immensities. Ere that come to pass; ere\r\nthe Pequod’s weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls of\r\nthe leviathan; at the outset it is but well to attend to a matter\r\nalmost indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of the\r\nmore special leviathanic revelations and allusions of all sorts which\r\nare to follow.\r\n\r\nIt is some systematized exhibition of the whale in his broad genera,\r\nthat I would now fain put before you. Yet is it no easy task. The\r\nclassification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here\r\nessayed. Listen to what the best and latest authorities have laid down.\r\n\r\n“No branch of Zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled\r\nCetology,” says Captain Scoresby, A.D. 1820.\r\n\r\n“It is not my intention, were it in my power, to enter into the inquiry\r\nas to the true method of dividing the cetacea into groups and families.\r\n* * * Utter confusion exists among the historians of this animal”\r\n(sperm whale), says Surgeon Beale, A.D. 1839.\r\n\r\n“Unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable waters.”\r\n“Impenetrable veil covering our knowledge of the cetacea.” “A field\r\nstrewn with thorns.” “All these incomplete indications but serve to\r\ntorture us naturalists.”\r\n\r\nThus speak of the whale, the great Cuvier, and John Hunter, and Lesson,\r\nthose lights of zoology and anatomy. Nevertheless, though of real\r\nknowledge there be little, yet of books there are a plenty; and so in\r\nsome small degree, with cetology, or the science of whales. Many are\r\nthe men, small and great, old and new, landsmen and seamen, who have at\r\nlarge or in little, written of the whale. Run over a few:—The Authors\r\nof the Bible; Aristotle; Pliny; Aldrovandi; Sir Thomas Browne; Gesner;\r\nRay; Linnæus; Rondeletius; Willoughby; Green; Artedi; Sibbald; Brisson;\r\nMarten; Lacépède; Bonneterre; Desmarest; Baron Cuvier; Frederick\r\nCuvier; John Hunter; Owen; Scoresby; Beale; Bennett; J. Ross Browne;\r\nthe Author of Miriam Coffin; Olmstead; and the Rev. T. Cheever. But to\r\nwhat ultimate generalizing purpose all these have written, the above\r\ncited extracts will show.\r\n\r\nOf the names in this list of whale authors, only those following Owen\r\never saw living whales; and but one of them was a real professional\r\nharpooneer and whaleman. I mean Captain Scoresby. On the separate\r\nsubject of the Greenland or right-whale, he is the best existing\r\nauthority. But Scoresby knew nothing and says nothing of the great\r\nsperm whale, compared with which the Greenland whale is almost unworthy\r\nmentioning. And here be it said, that the Greenland whale is an usurper\r\nupon the throne of the seas. He is not even by any means the largest of\r\nthe whales. Yet, owing to the long priority of his claims, and the\r\nprofound ignorance which, till some seventy years back, invested the\r\nthen fabulous or utterly unknown sperm-whale, and which ignorance to\r\nthis present day still reigns in all but some few scientific retreats\r\nand whale-ports; this usurpation has been every way complete. Reference\r\nto nearly all the leviathanic allusions in the great poets of past\r\ndays, will satisfy you that the Greenland whale, without one rival, was\r\nto them the monarch of the seas. But the time has at last come for a\r\nnew proclamation. This is Charing Cross; hear ye! good people all,—the\r\nGreenland whale is deposed,—the great sperm whale now reigneth!\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 0"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KFNR84A9QXWBKCWCK87YB232","peer_label":"32","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KFNR84A9QXWBKCWCK87YB232","peer_label":"32","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR81RMVAX2BBMMBW51V97D","peer_label":"Moby Dick; Or, The Whale","peer_type":"novel","predicate":"partOf"},{"peer":"01KFNR0H0Q791Y1SMZWEQ09FGV","peer_label":"Moby Dick","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KFNR86WY1GS47784ZHNK2KRV","peer_label":"Chunk 1","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:02.393Z","ts":"2026-01-23T15:41:14.937Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}