the maddened monster at a rate that makes the water boil round their bows. Such is the power of the fish, that if he came in contact with a ship, during his headlong course, his weight and impetus would stave in her sides. Sometimes he runs straightforward; at others in circles, with irregular rapidity. Still the boat sticks to him, until the smart of his hurt subsiding, or through fatigue, he slackens his speed, enabling his enemies to approach and to pierce him with fresh wounds. At last, when the waters around are reddened with his blood, comes the death-flurry. "Stern all!" The boats stand clear, and the fish disappears in the cloud of spray that he, dashes up in his dying agonies. His flukes quiver, he plunges heavily, and all is over. Perhaps, and this frequently happens, in the course of the contest a boat has been cut in two, or so far damaged as to fill and sink. But the crew are seldom lost. They support themselves by aid of the oars, until their comrades pick them up. Whaling seamen are paid by shares in the profits of the voyage, which arrangement of course contributes to render them zealous and daring. Such are the scenes described in the early part of Dr Coulter's book, some of them with tolerable spirit. The whale captured, next comes the cutting in and boiling out of the blubber--the former a laborious and often a dangerous process, the latter, anything but an odoriferous one. The death of a whale is the signal for the arrival of a host of sharks--blue, brown, and shovel-nosed--all eager to make a meal off the defunct leviathan. "We were all day surrounded with sea-fowl of various kinds--haglets, peterels, &c.--picking up floating particles of blubber as it passed astern, and vast numbers of large blue sharks that kept continually plunging on the fish, and rendered it very unsafe for the man to go down and point the hook into the hole cut for it; indeed we were frequently obliged to jerk him up off the whale out of their way by the aid of the rope round him for that purpose." The carcass and head on board, the fires are lighted, the kettle boils, and the ship speeds merrily on her course--the crew reckoning their share of gain, and listening anxiously for the welcome sound of "There he blows!"--the look-out man's usual cry on sighting a whale.