Capturing a huge sperm whale. (From a very rare print.)
THE WHALE
“Oh, the rare old Whale, ’mid storm and gale,
In his ocean home will be
A giant in might where might is right,
And King of the boundless sea.”
From “Moby Dick.”
No animal in prehistoric or historic times has ever exceeded the whale, in either size or strength, which explains perhaps its survival from ancient times. Few people have any idea of the relative size of the whale compared with other animals. A large specimen weighs about ninety tons, or thirty times as much as an elephant, which beside a whale appears about as large as a dog compared to an elephant. It is equivalent in bulk to one hundred oxen, and outweighs a village of one thousand people. If cut into steaks and eaten, as in Japan, it would supply a meal to an army of one hundred and twenty thousand men.
