"Sperm whale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The sperm whale, or cachalot, (genus physeter) is a rare visitor in the higher latitudes. Now and then a solitary specimen is taken in the Northern Atlantic, but the best place to catch a lot is on the Pacific coast. It may be mentioned incidentally, as a curious meteorological ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 19, August 6, 1870 • Various
... at the Portland fishery were of two kinds, the right or black whale, and the sperm whale. The right whale has an immense tongue, and lives by suction, the food being a kind of small shrimp. When in a flurry—that is, when she has received her death-stroke with the lance—she goes round in ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... leaned, and went to his pivot-hole, he suddenly thrust out his face fiercely, snuffing up the sea air as a sagacious ship's dog will, in drawing nigh to some barbarous isle. He declared that a whale must be near. Soon that peculiar odor, sometimes to a great distance given forth by the living sperm whale, was palpable to all the watch; nor was any mariner surprised when, after inspecting the compass, and then the dog-vane, and then ascertaining the precise bearing of the odor as nearly as possible, Ahab rapidly ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... suppose that arrow-heads are no longer manufactured; the art of fashioning them is not lost. Almost every tribe manufactures its own. Bowlders of flint are broken with a sledge-hammer made of a rounded pebble of hornstone set in a twisted withe. This bone is thought to be the tooth of the sperm whale. In Oregon the Indian arrow is still pointed with flint. The Iroquois also used flint until they laid aside the arrow for the lack of anything to hunt. The Iroquois youth, though the rifle has been introduced largely into his tribe, will ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... divides into halves, one whereof is called Weather Bay, the other Lee Bay; while the volcanic promontories, terminating his coasts, are styled South Head and North Head. I note this, because these bays are famous in the annals of the Sperm Whale Fishery. The whales come here at certain seasons to calve. When ships first cruised hereabouts, I am told, they used to blockade the entrance of Lee Bay, when their boats going round by Weather Bay, passed through Narborough channel, ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville |
