.. < chapter lxxiv 7  THE SPERM WHALE'S HEAD--CONTRASTED VIEW >


     Here, now, are

two great whales, laying their heads together; let us join them, and lay

together our own.  Of the grand order of folio leviathans, the Sperm Whale and


     the Right Whale are by far the most noteworthy.  They are the only whales

regularly hunted by man.  To the Nantucketer, they present the two extremes of

all the known varieties of the whale.  As the external difference between them

is mainly observable in their heads; and as a head of each is this moment

hanging from the Pequod's side; and as we may freely go from one to the

other, by merely stepping across the deck: --where, I should like to know,

will you obtain a better chance to study practical cetology than here?  In the

first place, you are struck by the general contrast between these heads.

Both are massive enough in all conscience; but there is a certain mathematical

symmetry in the Sperm Whale's which the Right Whale's sadly lacks.  There is

more character in the Sperm Whale's head.  As you behold it, you

involuntarily yield the immense superiority to him, in point of pervading

dignity.  In the present instance, too, this dignity is heightened by the

pepper and salt color of his head at the summit, giving token of advanced age

and large experience.  In short, he is what the fishermen technically call a


     grey-headed whale.  Let us now note what is least dissimilar in these heads

-- namely, the two most important organs, the eye and the ear.

.. <p 328 >

Far back on the side of the head, and low down, near the angle of either

whale's jaw, if you narrowly search, you will at last see a lashless eye,

which you would fancy to be a young colt's eye; so out of all proportion is it

to the magnitude of the head.  Now, from this peculiar sideway position of the

whale's eyes, it is plain that he can never see an object which is exactly

ahead, no more than he can one exactly astern.  in a word, the position of

the whale's eyes corresponds to that of a man's ears; and you may fancy, for

yourself, how it would fare with you, did you sideways survey objects through

your ears.  You would find that you could only command some thirty degrees of

vision in advance of the straight side-line of sight; and about thirty more

behind it.  If your bitterest foe were walking straight towards you, with

dagger uplifted in broad day, you would not be able to see him, any more

than if he were stealing upon you from behind.  In a word, you would have two

backs, so to speak; but, at the same time, also, two fronts (side fronts):

for what is it that makes the front of a man --what, indeed, but his eyes?

Moreover, while in most other animals that I can now think of, the eyes are so

planted as imperceptibly to blend their visual power, so as to produce one

picture and not two to the brain; the peculiar position of the whale's eyes,

effectually divided as they are by many cubic feet of solid head, which

towers between them like a great mountain separating two lakes in valleys;

this, of course, must wholly separate the impressions which each independent

organ imparts.  The whale, therefore, must see one distinct picture on this

side, and another distinct picture on that side; while all between must be

profound darkness and nothingness to him.  Man may, in effect, be said to look

out on the world from a sentry-box with two joined sashes for his window.

But with the whale, these two sashes are separately inserted, making two

distinct windows, but sadly impairing the view.  This peculiarity of the

whale's eyes is a thing always to be borne in mind in the fishery; and to be

remembered by the reader in some subsequent scenes.  A curious and most

puzzling question might be started concerning

.. <p 329 >

this visual matter as touching the Leviathan.  But I must be content with a

hint.  so long as a man's eyes are open in the light, the act of seeing is

involuntary; that is, he cannot then help mechanically seeing whatever

objects are before him.  Nevertheless, any one's experience will teach him,

that though he can take in an undiscriminating sweep of things at one glance,

it is quite impossible for him, attentively, and completely, to examine any

two things --however large or however small --at one and the same instant of

time; never mind if they lie side by side and touch each other.  But if you

now come to separate these two objects, and surround each by a circle of

profound darkness; then, in order to see one of them, in such a manner as to

bring your mind to bear on it, the other will be utterly excluded from your

contemporary consciousness.  How is it, then, with the whale?  True, both his

eyes, in themselves, must simultaneously act; but is his brain so much more

comprehensive, combining, and subtle than man's, that he can at the same

moment of time attentively examine two distinct prospects, one on one side of

him, and the other in an exactly opposite direction?  If he can, then is it as

marvellous a thing in him, as if a man were able simultaneously to go through

the demonstrations of two distinct problems in Euclid.  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

.. <p 330 >

right.  While the ear 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. -- Why then do you try to enlarge your mind?  Subtilize

it.  Let us now with whatever levers and steam-engines we have at hand, cant

over the sperm whale's head, so that it may lie bottom up; then, ascending

by a ladder to the summit, have a peep down the mouth; and were it not that

the body is now completely separated from it, with a lantern we might descend


     into the great Kentucky Mammoth Cave of his stomach.  But let us hold on here

by this tooth, and look about us where we are.  What a really beautiful and

chaste-looking mouth!  from floor to ceiling, lined, or rather papered with a

glistening white membrane, glossy as bridal satins.  But come out now, and

look at this portentous lower jaw, which seems like the long narrow lid of an

immense snuff-box, with a hinge at one end, instead of one side.  If you pry

it up, so as to get it overhead, and expose its rows of teeth, it seems a

terrific portcullis; and such, alas!  it proves to many a poor wight in the

fishery, upon whom these spikes fall with impaling force.  But far more

terrible is it to behold, when fathoms down in the sea, you see some sulky

whale, floating there suspended, with his prodigious jaw, some fifteen feet

long, hanging straight down at right-angles with his body, for all the world

like a ship's jib-boom.  This whale is not dead; he is only dispirited; out

of sorts, perhaps; hypochondriac; and so supine, that the hinges of his jaw

have relaxed, leaving him there in that ungainly sort of plight, a reproach

to all his tribe, who must, no doubt, imprecate lock-jaws upon him.  In most

cases this lower jaw --being easily unhinged by a practised artist --is

disengaged and hoisted on deck for the purpose of extracting the ivory teeth,

and furnishing a supply of

.. <p 331 >

that hard white whalebone with which the fishermen fashion all sorts of

curious articles, including canes, umbrella-stocks, and handles to

riding-whips.  With a long, weary hoist the jaw is dragged on board, as if it

were an anchor; and when the proper time comes --some few days after the other

work --Queequeg, Daggoo, and Tashtego, being all accomplished dentists, are set

to drawing teeth.  With a keen cutting-spade, Queequeg lances the gums; then

the jaw is lashed down to ringbolts, and a tackle being rigged from aloft,

they drag out these teeth, as Michigan oxen drag stumps of old oaks out of

wild wood-lands.  There are generally forty-two teeth in all; in old whales,

much worn down, but undecayed; nor filled after our artificial fashion.  The

jaw is afterwards sawn into slabs, and piled away like joists for building

houses.

.. <p 331 >

