He too is of leviathan-like dimensions; generally from sixty to seventy feet in length, and not more slender as to his waist. But only the male Sperm boasts these proportions. The female is, by comparison, a dainty little being, seldom more than thirty or thirty-five feet long. A Sperm has one spout-hole, instead of two; and in colour he is black above, grey below. In his outlines a marked difference is visible. Looked upon sideways, the form of the huge square head is precisely like the trunk of an immense forest tree, cut off short; and the “blow-hole” is situated close to the end or front of this “truncated” head. The latter is really a reservoir, containing a large supply of valuable spermaceti oil, for the sake of which the creature is killed by man. Instead of a mouth full of hair-fringed “baleen,” these whales have proper teeth, better suited, one would think, to their size. Their food too is of a far more substantial kind. It was told in an earlier chapter how Sperm Whales live mainly on cuttlefishes; and how sometimes, in midnight combat, they fight and conquer even the mightiest of those loathsome monsters of the deep. Sperms are found through wide ranges of the ocean, in most tropical waters, as far north and as far south as 60° in each direction from the equator. But whereas Right Whales of colder seas prefer to hunt in couples only, Sperm Whales crowd together in large companies. Sometimes, it is true, lonely specimens are found. They, however, are usually morose and ill-conditioned brutes, ready to fight even men. It has been suggested that perhaps they are thus solitary _because_ of their morose temperament, which has made it impossible for their fellows to put up with their presence. Both these huge whales have powerful fluked tails and small flippers. It is curious that inside the flippers are separate branching bones, not unlike the bones of a human hand, only covered with thick skin in one piece, like a fingerless glove. This rather seems to indicate that the flippers may be of the nature of hands in embryo. The Sperm does not come to the surface for air nearly so often as his Greenland cousin. Regularly once in each hour and ten minutes is the plan he follows; and then he remains for several minutes at the surface, going through a series of sixty or seventy mighty puffings and blowings. After which he vanishes for another hour and ten minutes. Some pathetic tales have been told of the devotion of a mother-whale to her infant--she usually has but one at a time. Early in the present century a harpooner deliberately sent his harpoon into an infant-whale, hoping thus to take the mother. And he had not miscalculated the strength of maternal love. No thought had that poor mother of saving herself by flight. She came fearlessly close to the boat, seized her wounded little one, and dragged it away with extraordinary rapidity, using up six hundred feet of line.