BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER II. (Right Whale).--In one respect this
is the most venerable of the leviathans, being the one first
regularly hunted by man. It yields the article commonly known
as whalebone or baleen; and the oil specially known as "whale oil,"
an inferior article in commerce. Among the fishermen,
he is indiscriminately designated by all the following titles:
The Whale; the Greenland Whale; the Black Whale; the Great Whale;
the True Whale; the Right Whale. There is a deal of obscurity
concerning the Identity of the species thus multitudinously baptized.
What then is the whale, which I include in the second species of
my Folios? It is the Great Mysticetus of the English naturalists;
the Greenland Whale of the English Whalemen; the Baliene Ordinaire
of the French whalemen; the Growlands Walfish of the Swedes. It is
the whale which for more than two centuries past has been hunted
by the Dutch and English in the Arctic seas; it is the whale
which the American fishermen have long pursued in the Indian ocean,
on the Brazil Banks, on the Nor' West Coast, and various other parts
of the world, designated by them Right Whale Cruising Grounds.
Some pretend to see a difference between the Greenland whale
of the English and the right whale of the Americans.
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