It is some systematized exhibition of the whale in his broad genera,
that I would now fain put before you. Yet is it no easy task.
The classification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less
is here essayed. Listen to what the best and latest authorities
have laid down.
"No branch of Zoology is so much involved as that which is
entitled Cetology," says Captain Scoresby, A.D. 1820.
"It is not my intention, were it in my power, to enter into the inquiry
as to the true method of dividing the cetacea into groups and
families.... Utter confusion exists among the historians of this animal"
(sperm whale), says Surgeon Beale, A.D. 1839.
"Unfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable waters."
"Impenetrable veil covering our knowledge of the cetacea."
"A field strewn with thorns." "All these incomplete indications
but serve to torture us naturalists."
Thus speak of the whale, the great Cuvier, and John Hunter, and Lesson,
those lights of zoology and anatomy. Nevertheless, though of real
knowledge there be little, yet of books there are a plenty;
and so in some small degree, with cetology, or the science of whales.
Many are the men, small and great, old and new, landsmen and seamen,
who have at large or in little, written of the whale.
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