But I
pass that matter by.
I know of only four published outlines of the great
Sperm Whale; Colnett's, Huggins's, Frederick Cuvier's, and Beale's. In
the previous chapter Colnett and Cuvier have been referred to.
Huggins's is far better than theirs; but, by great odds,
Beale's is the best. All Beale's drawings of this whale
are good, excepting the middle figure in the picture of three
whales in various attitudes, capping his second chapter.
His frontispiece, boats attacking Sperm Whales, though no doubt
calculated to excite the civil scepticism of some parlor men,
is admirably correct and life-like in its general effect.
Some of the Sperm Whale drawings in J. Ross Browne are pretty
correct in contour; but they are wretchedly engraved.
That is not his fault though.
Of the Right Whale, the best outline pictures are in Scoresby;
but they are drawn on too small a scale to convey a desirable impression.
He has but one picture of whaling scenes, and this is a sad deficiency,
because it is by such pictures only, when at all well done, that you
can derive anything like a truthful idea of the living whale as seen
by his living hunters.
But, taken for all in all, by far the finest, though in
some details not the most correct, presentations of whales
and whaling scenes to be anywhere found, are two large
French engravings, well executed, and taken from paintings by
one Garnery.
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