But they
precisely agree in all their grand features; nor has there yet
been presented a single determinate fact upon which to ground
a radical distinction. It is by endless subdivisions based
upon the most inconclusive differences, that some departments
of natural history become so repellingly intricate.
The right whale will be elsewhere treated of at some length,
with reference to elucidating the sperm whale.
BOOK I. (Folio), CHAPTER III. (Fin-Back).--Under this head I reckon
a monster which, by the various names of Fin-Back, Tall-Spout,
and Long-John, has been seen almost in every sea and is commonly
the whale whose distant jet is so often descried by passengers
crossing the Atlantic, in the New York packet-tracks. In
the length he attains, and in his baleen, the Fin-back
resembles the right whale, but is of a less portly girth,
and a lighter color, approaching to olive. His great lips present
a cable-like aspect, formed by the intertwisting, slanting folds
of large wrinkles. His grand distinguishing feature, the fin,
from which he derives his name, is often a conspicuous object.
This fin is some three or four feet long, growing vertically
from the hinder part of the back, of an angular shape,
and with a very sharp pointed end.
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