Moby Dick

Did you know that you get a mention in Moby Dick? I asked Pliny.

No, he said, and who is Moby Dick?

It's a famous book by Herman Melville I replied, about a fearsome white whale, and Captain Ahab, who is obsessed with killing it. I'm re-reading it. In the chapter called Cetology he lists all the men small and great, old and new, landsmen and seamen who have written about the whale, and you are third on the list.

Third? After whom?

The Authors of the Bible, and Aristotle.

Hmmmm. I do not think much of the Bible. But to Aristotle I am pleased to defer. Am I quoted by your Melville?

Not directly, but he agrees with you that the whale is a type of fish.

Great Jupiter! I am vindicated. Does he say why he thinks so?

Yes, he says it all depends upon the definition. Linnaeus's opinion that the whale is not a fish because of its warm bilocular heart, its lungs, its moveable eyelids, hollow ears and mammalian qualities, he dismisses as insufficiently reasoned humbug. The correct definition for a whale, he claims, is a spouting fish with a horizontal tail.

Pliny beamed. And does he list all the different kinds of whales? he asked.

He does. And later chapters are called "Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales", " Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales" , and " Of Whales in Paint, in Teeth, in Wood, in Sheet-Iron, in Stone, in Mountains, in Stars".

This book, said Pliny rapturously, must be a truly wonderful account of whales. May I read it after you?

Yes, I said, if you promise not to read page 470.