You observe that in the ordinary swimming position of the Sperm Whale, the front of his head presents an almost wholly vertical plane to the water; you observe that the lower part of that front slopes considerably backwards, so as to furnish more of a retreat for the long socket which receives the boom-like lower jaw; you observe that the mouth is entirely under the head, much in the same way, indeed, as though your own mouth were entirely under your chin.  Moreover you observe that the whale has no external nose; and that what nose he has—­his spout hole—­ is on the top of his head; you observe that his eyes and ears are at the sides of his head; nearly one third of his entire length from the front.  Wherefore, you must now have perceived that the front of the Sperm Whale’s head is a dead, blind wall, without a single organ or tender prominence of any sort whatsoever.  Furthermore, you are now to consider that only in the extreme, lower, backward sloping part of the front of the head, is there the slightest vestige of bone; and not till you get near twenty feet from the forehead do you come to the full cranial development.  So that this whole enormous boneless mass is as one wad.  Finally, though, as will soon be revealed, its contents partly comprise the most delicate oil; yet, you are now to be apprised of the nature of the substance which so impregnably invests all that apparent effeminacy.  In some previous place I have described to you how the blubber wraps the body of the whale, as the rind wraps an orange.  Just so with the head; but with this difference:  about the head this envelope, though not so thick is of a boneless toughness, inestimable by any man who has not handled it.  The severest pointed harpoon, the sharpest lance darted by the strongest human arm, impotently rebounds from it.  It is as though the forehead of the Sperm Whale were paved with horses’ hoofs.  I do not think that any sensation lurks in it.

Bethink yourself also of another thing.  When two large, loaded Indian-men chance to crowd and crush towards each other in the docks, what do the sailors do?  They do not suspend between them, at the point of coming contact, any merely hard substance, like iron or wood.  No, they hold there a large, round wad of tow and cork, enveloped in the thickest and toughest of ox-hide.  That bravely and uninjured takes the jam which would have snapped all their oaken handspikes and iron crow-bars.  By itself this sufficiently illustrates the obvious fact I drive at.  But supplementary to this, it has hypothetically occurred to me, that as ordinary fish possess what is called a swimming bladder in them, capable, at will, of distension or contraction; and as the Sperm Whale, as far as I know, has no such provision in him; considering, too, the otherwise inexplicable manner in which he now depresses his head altogether beneath the surface, and anon swims with it high elevated out of the water; considering the unobstructed elasticity of its envelope; considering the unique interior of his head; it has hypothetically occurred to me, I say, that those mystical lung-celled honeycombs there may possibly have some hitherto unknown and unsuspected connexion with the outer air, so as to be susceptible to atmospheric distension and contraction.  If this be so, fancy the irresistibleness of that might, to which the most impalpable and destructive of all elements contributes.