{"id":"01KFNR88E3WSBHYQX4GGQJDPAG","cid":"bafkreietle5vrrba43gg6jgiknhvbhvvbu5yfjpvrjdruxdz5mhaxtl24q","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":10619,"extracted_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:03.445Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KFNR0Z394A878Y5AQ63MQEM2","start_line":10563,"text":"antique vases. Though universally denominated a dolphin, I nevertheless\r\ncall this book-binder’s fish an attempt at a whale; because it was so\r\nintended when the device was first introduced. It was introduced by an\r\nold Italian publisher somewhere about the 15th century, during the\r\nRevival of Learning; and in those days, and even down to a\r\ncomparatively late period, dolphins were popularly supposed to be a\r\nspecies of the Leviathan.\r\n\r\nIn the vignettes and other embellishments of some ancient books you\r\nwill at times meet with very curious touches at the whale, where all\r\nmanner of spouts, jets d’eau, hot springs and cold, Saratoga and\r\nBaden-Baden, come bubbling up from his unexhausted brain. In the\r\ntitle-page of the original edition of the “Advancement of Learning” you\r\nwill find some curious whales.\r\n\r\nBut quitting all these unprofessional attempts, let us glance at those\r\npictures of leviathan purporting to be sober, scientific delineations,\r\nby those who know. In old Harris’s collection of voyages there are some\r\nplates of whales extracted from a Dutch book of voyages, A.D. 1671,\r\nentitled “A Whaling Voyage to Spitzbergen in the ship Jonas in the\r\nWhale, Peter Peterson of Friesland, master.” In one of those plates the\r\nwhales, like great rafts of logs, are represented lying among\r\nice-isles, with white bears running over their living backs. In another\r\nplate, the prodigious blunder is made of representing the whale with\r\nperpendicular flukes.\r\n\r\nThen again, there is an imposing quarto, written by one Captain\r\nColnett, a Post Captain in the English navy, entitled “A Voyage round\r\nCape Horn into the South Seas, for the purpose of extending the\r\nSpermaceti Whale Fisheries.” In this book is an outline purporting to\r\nbe a “Picture of a Physeter or Spermaceti whale, drawn by scale from\r\none killed on the coast of Mexico, August, 1793, and hoisted on deck.”\r\nI doubt not the captain had this veracious picture taken for the\r\nbenefit of his marines. To mention but one thing about it, let me say\r\nthat it has an eye which applied, according to the accompanying scale,\r\nto a full grown sperm whale, would make the eye of that whale a\r\nbow-window some five feet long. Ah, my gallant captain, why did ye not\r\ngive us Jonah looking out of that eye!\r\n\r\nNor are the most conscientious compilations of Natural History for the\r\nbenefit of the young and tender, free from the same heinousness of\r\nmistake. Look at that popular work “Goldsmith’s Animated Nature.” In\r\nthe abridged London edition of 1807, there are plates of an alleged\r\n“whale” and a “narwhale.” I do not wish to seem inelegant, but this\r\nunsightly whale looks much like an amputated sow; and, as for the\r\nnarwhale, one glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in this\r\nnineteenth century such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine upon\r\nany intelligent public of schoolboys.\r\n\r\nThen, again, in 1825, Bernard Germain, Count de Lacépède, a great\r\nnaturalist, published a scientific systemized whale book, wherein are\r\nseveral pictures of the different species of the Leviathan. All these\r\nare not only incorrect, but the picture of the Mysticetus or Greenland\r\nwhale (that is to say, the Right whale), even Scoresby, a long\r\nexperienced man as touching that species, declares not to have its\r\ncounterpart in nature.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KFNR84DSE118DF6SYKPTMFZT","peer_label":"55","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KFNR84DSE118DF6SYKPTMFZT","peer_label":"55","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":"01KFNR88F0X442BAK9YMZASXVY","peer_label":"Chunk 2","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"},{"peer":"01KFNR88AMW10SVZ7XXV2KBMBR","peer_label":"Chunk 0","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-23T15:41:04.075Z","ts":"2026-01-23T15:41:16.675Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}