when her partner has been struck, has voluntarily sacrificed her own life with his. Parental love also is especially marked in this family; the mother suckles her young with great tenderness for twelve months, and if attacked, willingly sacrifices her own life in its defence.* The cruel and faithless husband or wife, or the unnatural father or mother, that can desert their offspring, may go to the whale and learn lessons of conjugal and parental fidelity and attachment.

One can hardly bear to turn from this scene to speak to you of other branches of the natural history of the whale; but I promised you to do so, and therefore at once seek to fulfil my word.

Though, as we have seen, the whale is so peaceable; yet he has enemies, and two of very different characters, the one, the sword fish, who darts his fearful weapon through and through the skin and blubber, to the very flesh, and reddens the sea with the blood of its victim; the other, the whale louse, a little animal that pitches its tent upon the

which was harpooned by the whalers; it made a long and formidable resistance; its companion attended and assisted it, and when the wounded one expired, stretched itself with great bellowing sounds upon the dead fish, and voluntarily shared its fate."

Waller, in his poem of the "Summer Islands," mentions the fact of a grampus, (of the same great family as the whale,) which had got on shore with her young, and on being attacked escaped; but the young one was not so quick: the mother finding this, and seeing no hope of rescuing it, preferred death with her young, to life without it. See Sharon Turner's "Sacred History of the World," vol. i. p. 310; a work in which more interesting matter is collected together, and facts narrated connected with natural history, than can be found probably in the same compass, in any book in our language; in nine months it went through three editions, and in three years more attained its sixth.

whale's very body, and subsists upon its substance. But these two are insignificant enemies when compared with man, who, with an avidity and boldness that is startling to contemplate, pursues, and overtakes, and conquers an animal, a thousand times larger than himself. But in this, and many other ways, we find that wonderful promise to Noah fulfilled," And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered." (Gen. ix. 1, 2.)

The method of taking the whale is so extraordinary, that I have thought a few remarks concerning it might interest you.

The vessels which are occupied in the whale fishery, are called emphatically "WHALERS;" they are always chosen vessels, of several hundred tons burthen, with a captain and crew well appointed, and everything fitted for this one express purpose. Their boats, six in number, are called whale boats; they are of a peculiar form,—the head and stern both sharp. Six men are appointed to each boat, besides the steersman and the man with the harpoon; and thus equipped, they leave their native land, some going to the Arctic seas, and some to the Southern Ocean, for fish: for though Naturalists will not allow whales to be fish, yet the sailor thinks that everything that swims is fish; and he enumerates his success-by having "taken so many FISH."

But imagine the vessel arrived at her destination, where the whales are supposed to be in numbers.-Just at noon, when the sun is bright, the man from the crow's nest calls aloud, "a fish!" Instantly all is activity, the boats are manned, and one of them pulls directly to the whale, others following; all this while, the animal seems quite unconscious of the terrible scene that awaits it-it darts not into its deep and unfathomable home, but lets the enemy come right to its side. Instantly that the boat is close to its prey, its approach being as quiet as possible, the harpooner lifts up his hand, and then, with all his power, plunges "the barbed arrow" into this quiet monarch of the sea. The whale feels the deadly blow, and plunges, now too late, with tremendous velocity, sometimes, it is said, even to eight hundred fathoms, in the deep. Fastened to the barb is a line, consisting of six parts, each a hundred and twenty fathoms in length, which, spliced together, makes in all a rope four thousand three hundred and twenty yards; this clearly coiled up, is drawn out of the boat with such violence, that if ought impeded it, all would be destruction. But now, the line slackens, and the prisoner rises from the bottom of the deep, panting for breath,—those two orifices through which he had spouted in his pastime, and darted the sparkling fountain in the sunbeam, now (if the barb has deepened in the flesh) shoot out with blood. The boats, only intent on one thing, again approach their victim-another barb follows the first, and again he seeks to escape: but now, twice captive and weakened through the loss of blood,

he rises in faintness and weakness, and becomes (each man darting his lance into him) the easy prey of his adventurous enemies.

Quickly the fins and tail are cut off, and the whale tugged to the ship, where the blubber,* a thick substance from which the oil is run, is sliced from the trunk. The whalebone is cut from the upper jaw, and then the carcase is cut adrift, and becomes the food of a variety of animals that inhabit the ocean; while the ship passes on her way in quest of other prey.

But the whale fishery is attended with great danger. Sometimes the whale strikes the boat with its tail, and destruction and loss of life almost always follow; at other times the whale has been known resolutely to choose, as if by instinct, the ship itself for its opponent; and swimming to some distance a-head, has returned with terrible speed, and struck the vessel in the bow, and she has foundered.

One turns with delight, my beloved children, from these scenes of death, to contemplate those days so blessedly called the times of restitution; and though the scriptures have not fully expressed what the extent of the blessings of those times will be; yet restitution always implies three things (itself the third;) first, possession; second, loss; third, restitution. This truth all will allow,-that the redeemed creation will not be less glorious than the first. I will

A large whale will yield seventy barrels of oil, and even the tongue itself has been known to melt down to five or six barrels. The value of a large fish is estimated at a thousand pounds.

enlarge on this in my next; yet I could not help dropping a word on it now.

The Sperm Whale.-The second animal, under the order CETE, is the sperm whale-sometimes called the Cachelot. This animal is not so large as the Greenland whale, rarely exceeding sixty feet in length. It is found in the southern ocean; and as the sperm oil is so much more valuable than the common, it is sought with increased avidity.

Naturalists have found a difficulty in arranging the varieties of this genus; but they may be divided into three. The "blunt headed," "round headed," and "high finned." If the head of the great whale is large, that of the sperm whale is still larger, constituting nearly one-half of the whole body; and it is said, that the thorax is capacious enough to admit an ox. In the stomach of the former, scarcely anything is found: not so the cachelot; for vast quantities of fish give the full proof that he is as voracious as the whale of the north is gentle and, so to speak, abstemious.

There are instances of this whale being taken off the island of Bermuda; and I remember, before I was thirteen years of age, pulling into the romantic harbour of St. George's, the capital of that island, and to my great astonishment, seeing a large sperm whale, that had been caught and to wed in the previous day. Several Negroes were standing on it, with hatchets, and cutting out its flesh in large lumps of some pounds weight, which they hang up and dry; and it is by no means either an unsightly, or unpalatable food, if the whale is young;