Nor, strictly investigated,
is there any incongruity in this comparison.
It may be but an idle whim, but it has always seemed to me,
that the extraordinary vacillations of movement displayed
by some whales when beset by three or four boats; the timidity
and liability to queer frights, so common to such whales;
I think that all this indirectly proceeds from the helpless
perplexity of volition, in which their divided and diametrically
opposite powers of vision must involve them.
But the ear of the whale is full as curious as the eye.
If you are an entire stranger to their race, you might hunt
over these two heads for hours, and never discover that organ.
The ear has no external leaf whatever; and into the hole itself
you can hardly insert a quill, so wondrously minute is it.
It is lodged a little behind the eye. With respect to their ears,
this important difference is to be observed between the sperm whale
and the right. While the ears of the former has an external opening,
that of the latter is entirely and evenly covered over with a membrane,
so as to be quite imperceptible from without.
Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should
see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder
through an ear which is smaller than a hare's? But if his
eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel's great telescope;
and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals;
would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing?
Not at all.
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