Summary
Few animals have been so regularly and routinely dissected while revealing so few of its secrets. Herman Melville wrote that 'the sperm whale, scientific or poetic, lives not complete in any literature. Far above all other hunted whales, his is an unwritten life.' [Dolin] points out that this statement is as true today as it was 150 years ago. The oil for which the sperm whale was primarily hunted, located in a vast tank in its head, remains a puzzle.
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Inscrutable Lords of the Deep
LEVIATHAN: THE HISTORY OF WHALING IN AMERICA by Eric Jay Dolin W. W. Norton & Co. , $27.95, pp. 479, ISBN 9780393060577 The sperm whale, more than any other whale, has captured the public's imagination, to the point that when the average...
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