Moby-Dick; or, The Whale

Cuvier; John Hunter; Owen; Scoresby; Beale; Bennett; J. Ross Browne;
the Author of Miriam Coffin; Olmstead; and the Rev. T. Cheever. But to
what ultimate generalizing purpose all these have written, the above
cited extracts will show.

Of the names in this list of whale authors, only those following Owen
ever saw living whales; and but one of them was a real professional
harpooneer and whaleman. I mean Captain Scoresby. On the separate
subject of the Greenland or right-whale, he is the best existing
authority. But Scoresby knew nothing and says nothing of the great
sperm whale, compared with which the Greenland whale is almost unworthy
mentioning. And here be it said, that the Greenland whale is an usurper
upon the throne of the seas. He is not even by any means the largest of
the whales. Yet, owing to the long priority of his claims, and the
profound ignorance which, till some seventy years back, invested the
then fabulous and utterly unknown sperm-whale, and which ignorance to
this present day still reigns in all but some few scientific retreats
and whale-ports; this usurpation has been every way complete. Reference
to nearly all the leviathanic allusions in the great poets of past