And scatter all the watery dust around.
Fearless the fierce destructive monsters roll,
Ingulph the fish, and drive the flying shoal.
In deepest seas these living isles appear,
And deepest seas can scarce their pressure bear:
Their bulk would more than fill the shelvy strait,
And fathom’d depths would yield beneath their weight.”
These animals possessing finer organs and higher sensations than others, show an eminent superiority. They have all the tenderness of birds or quadrupeds for their young, nurse them with constant care, and protect them from every injury. The female never produces more than one young, or two at the most; and this she suckles entirely in the manner of quadrupeds, her breasts being placed, as in the human kind, above the navel. The ends of these she protrudes at pleasure, to afford nutriment to her offspring. Perhaps the prophet Jeremiah has an eye to this when he says, “The sea-monsters draw out the breast, they give suck to their young ones.” Those of the cartilaginous kind, though not capable of nursing their young, yet bring them alive into the world, and defend them with courage and activity; while the spinous kind, a fierce, unmindful tribe, deposit their spawn, and leave the success to accident, without affording any protection.
As this first class of sea animals breathe the air, it is obvious they cannot bear to be a long time at once under water. They necessarily, every two or three minutes, emerge to the surface to take breath, as well as to spout out through their nostril (for they have but one), that water which they sucked in while gaping for their prey.
“Hugest of living creatures, on the deep,