What special functions, besides his uses to man, are assigned to the whale in the economy of nature, we do not know; but some considerations, suggested by the character of the food upon which certain species subsist, deserve to be specially noticed. None of the great mammals grouped under the general name of whale are rapacious. They all live upon small organisms, and the most numerous species feed almost wholly upon the soft gelatinous mollusks in which the sea abounds in all latitudes. We cannot calculate even approximately the number of the whales, or the quantity of organic nutriment consumed by an individual, and of course we can form no estimate of the total amount of animal matter withdrawn by them, in a given period, from the waters of the sea. It is certain, however, that it must have been enormous when they were more abundant, and that it is still very considerable. A very few years since, the United States had more than six hundred whaling ships constantly employed in the Pacific, and the product of the American whale fishery for the year ending June 1st, 1860, was seven millions and a half of dollars.[99] The mere bulk of the whales destroyed in a single year by the American and the European vessels engaged in this fishery would form an island of no inconsiderable dimensions, and each one of those taken must have consumed, in the course of his growth, many times his own weight of mollusks. The destruction of the whales must have been followed by a proportional increase of the organisms they feed upon, and if we had the means of comparing the statistics of these humble forms of life, for even so short a period as that between the years 1760 and 1860, we should find a difference sufficient, possibly, to suggest an explanation of some phenomena at present unaccounted for. For instance, as I have observed in another work,[100] the phosphorescence of the sea was unknown to ancient writers, or at least scarcely noticed by them, and even Homer--who, blind as tradition makes him when he composed his epics, had seen, and marked, in earlier life, all that the glorious nature of the Mediterranean and its coasts discloses to unscientific observation--nowhere alludes to this most beautiful and striking of maritime wonders. In the passage just referred to, I have endeavored to explain the silence of ancient writers with respect to this as well as other remarkable phenomena on psychological grounds; but is it not possible that, in modern times, the animalculae which produce it may have immensely multiplied, from the destruction of their natural enemies by man, and hence that the gleam shot forth by their decomposition, or by their living processes, is both more frequent and more brilliant than in the days of classic antiquity?