The common Whale has no teeth in either jaw, but its mouth is furnished with a kind of fringe of numerous long horny laminæ, which are what we call whalebone, and which form a kind of strainer, admitting only the small fish on which the Whale feeds. This Whalebone is one of the valuable products of the whale, though the oil is most important. “As when enclosing harpooners assail, In hyperborean seas, the slumbering Whale; Soon as the javelins pierce the scaly side, He groans, he darts impetuous down the tide; And, rack’d all o’er with lacerating pain, He flies remote beneath the flood in vain.” FALCONER. Whales are taken in great numbers about Spitzbergen, Greenland, and other northern countries by the English, the Dutch, &c. Considerable fleets of ships are sent out every spring for this purpose. When they begin their fishery, each ship is fastened or moored with nose-hooks to the ice. Two boats, each manned with six men, are ordered by the commodore to look out for the coming of the fish for two hours, when they are relieved by two more, and so by turns; the two boats lie at some small distance from the ship, each separated from the other, fastened to the ice with their boat-hooks, ready to let go in an instant at the first sight of the Whale. Here the dexterity of the Whale hunters is to be admired; for as soon as the animal shows itself, every man is at his oar, and they all rush on the Whale with prodigious swiftness; at the same time taking care to come behind its head, that it may not see the boat, which sometimes so alarms it, that it plunges down again before they have time to strike it. But the greatest care is to be taken of the tail, with which it many times does very great damage, both to the boats and seamen. The harpooner, who is placed at the head or bow of the boat, seeing the back of the Whale, and making the onset, thrusts the harpoon with all his might into its body by the help of a staff fixed to the iron for this purpose, and leaves it in, a line being fastened to it of about two inches in circumference, and one hundred and thirty-six fathoms long. Every boat is furnished with seven of these lines, from the motion of which, when let run, they observe the course of the Whale.