"Sperm whale" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... suppose that arrow-heads are no longer manufactured; the art of fashioning them is not lost. Almost every tribe manufactures its own. Bowlders of flint are broken with a sledge-hammer made of a rounded pebble of hornstone set in a twisted withe. This bone is thought to be the tooth of the sperm whale. In Oregon the Indian arrow is still pointed with flint. The Iroquois also used flint until they laid aside the arrow for the lack of anything to hunt. The Iroquois youth, though the rifle has been introduced largely into his tribe, will ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... proved true. As before, the Pequod steeply leaned over towards the sperm whale's head, now, by the counterpoise of both heads, she regained her own keel, though sorely strained, you may well believe. So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... SPERM WHALE. Otherwise known as the cachalot, Physeter macrocephalus. A large cetacean, belonging to the division of delphinoid or toothed whales. It is found in nearly all tropical and temperate seas, and is much hunted for the valuable sperm-oil ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... the Portland fishery were of two kinds, the right or black whale, and the sperm whale. The right whale has an immense tongue, and lives by suction, the food being a kind of small shrimp. When in a flurry—that is, when she has received her death-stroke with the lance—she goes round in a circle, working with her head and flukes. ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... exists, which is the gray [el gris]." Retana and Pastells regard Combes's ambar as meaning amber, the vegetable fossil; but it is possible that all these writers mean rather ambergris, which is supposed to be a morbid secretion of the sperm whale, and has been ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various |
