This most valuable portion of the animal encompasses its whole body. Its colour is yellowish white, yellow, or red; in old animals sometimes resembling the substance of the salmon. It swims in water. Its thickness all round the body is eight or ten to twenty inches, varying in different parts, as well as in different individuals. The lips are composed almost entirely of blubber, and yield from one to two tons of pure oil each. The oil appears retained in the blubber in minute cells, connected by a strong reticulated combination of tendinous fibres, which are condensed at the surface, and appears to form the substance of the skin. The oil is expelled when heated. In its fresh state, the blubber is without unpleasant smell, and it is only at the end of the voyage that the cargo of a Greenland ship becomes disagreeable. The quantity of oil yielded by a certain quantity of blubber varies according to the age of the animal; the blubber of the sucker contains a very small portion. The quantity of oil generally bears a proportion to the length of the longest blade of whalebone. Four tons of blubber in measure generally produce three tons of oil; the ton of oil being two hundred and fifty-two gallons, wine-measure. The flesh of the young whale is of a red colour, and, when broiled and seasoned with pepper and salt, eats like coarse beef. The bones are very porous, and contain much fine oil. The ribs are thirteen in number, and are nearly solid, and the bones of the fins, in number and proportion, are similar to those of the fingers of the human hand. A stout whale, of sixty feet in length, is of the enormous weight of seventy tons; the blubber weighs about thirty tons; the bones of the head, whalebone, fins, and tail, eight or ten; the carcase thirty or thirty-two.