Whales have lungs and warm blood, and their bodies do not differ much from those of a cow or a horse. There are several kinds, but in the good old whaling day only two kinds were of real value—the sperm whales or cachalots and the whales which yielded bone. The largest cachalot ever captured was nearly ninety feet long and nearly forty feet in circumference, and weighed about ninety tons! Think of it! One hundred and eighty thousand pounds! Now, if we say that thirteen men weigh a ton, a whale of this kind will weigh more than the entire population of a village of over eleven hundred inhabitants. It is also said that a large sperm whale weighs a good deal more than a hundred oxen, and has the strength of several hundred horses. The head is blunt and flat, and the skull sometimes measures more than twenty feet in length. The eye is near the angle of the jaw; it has no lashes, and is about as large as the eye of a colt. The creature can see ahead or to either side, but the eyes are separated by the immense head, so that each eye seems to work on its own account; and this is thought to be the reason why sperm whales act so queerly at times. The most curious organ is the ear. It is just behind the eye and is so small that a pencil can hardly be inserted in it. The lower jaw, which contains the teeth, is far smaller than the upper jaw, but it was regarded in whaling days of considerable value, for the posterior part called the “jawbone” and the teeth, which weighed about a pound and a half each, furnished the material out of which sailors made so many curious articles. The sperm whale has no nose, but a substitute in a spouthole on top of the head. The interior of the mouth is white, and the tongue is small and the throat large. The head is, in size, about one third of the body, and in it is what is called the “case” containing spermaceti, formerly used in the manufacture of candles. It is dipped out with buckets, and sometimes fifteen barrels are taken from a single head. What is this great oil case for? Some think that the animal draws upon it for nourishment during periods of food scarcity, just as bears store upon their bodies great quantities of fat to draw on later. The whales are covered with what is called blubber, which keeps them warm in cold water and relieves the pressure when they “sound,” that is, go down to great depths. The flippers, one on each side of the body, are not like the fins of a fish, but are the limbs of land mammals, covered with blubber to form paddles, and are supplied with bones, blood vessels and nerves.