[73] 'Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus,' lib. xxi. cap. vi. A.D. 1555.
Figures 24 and 25 (p. 64) are facsimiles of the illustrations which accompany the above description. It will be seen that, in the first, the _Physeter_ is depicted as uprearing a maned neck and head, like that of a fabled dragon; whilst in Fig. 25 it is shown as a whale flinging itself on board a ship, which is sinking under its ponderous weight. In both, torrents of water are issuing from its head, and it is evident that they are merely exaggerated misrepresentations of the "spouting" of whales.
Gesner copies many of Olaus Magnus's illustrations, and improves upon Fig. 25 by putting a numerous crew on board the ship. The unfortunate sailors are depicted in every attitude of terror and despair, and seem to be incapacitated from any attempt to save themselves by the flood of water which the whale is deliberately pouring upon them from its blow-holes.
[Illustration: FIG. 24.--THE PHYSETER INUNDATING A SHIP. _After Olaus Magnus._]
[Illustration: FIG. 25.--A WHALE POURING WATER INTO A SHIP FROM ITS BLOW-HOLE. _After Olaus Magnus._]
[Illustration: FIG. 26--SPERM WHALES SPOUTING.]
These old pictures appear, no doubt, ridiculous, but they are, really, very little more absurd and untrue to nature than many of those which disfigure some otherwise useful books on Natural History of the present day. I could refer to several, in which whales are represented as spouting from their blow-holes one or more columns of water, which, after ascending skyward to a considerable distance, fall over gracefully as if issuing from the nozzle of an ornamental fountain. I select one from amongst them (Fig. 26), not with any disrespect for the artist, author, or publisher of the work from which it is taken, but because, whilst it shows correctly the position of the blow-hole of the sperm whale, it also exhibits exactly that which I wish to confute. The publishers of the valuable work in which this picture appeared have generously consented to my reproducing it here.
When, in describing, in 1877, the White Whale then exhibited at the Westminster Aquarium, I said that whales do not spout water out of their blow-holes, and that the idea that they do so is a popular error, the statement was so contrary to generally-accepted notions that I was not surprised by receiving more than one letter on the subject. One very reasonable suggestion made to me was that, although the lesser whales, such as the porpoises, which I had had opportunities of watching in confinement at Brighton for two years, and the _Beluga_, which had been observed for a similar period at the New York Aquarium, and also at Westminster, did not "spout," the respiratory apparatus of the larger whales might be so modified as to permit them to do so. Let us consider the construction of the breathing apparatus which would have to be thus modified, as shown in the porpoise.