The ear has no external
leaf whatever; and into the hole itself you can hardly insert a
quill, so wondrously minute is it. It is lodged a little behind the
eye. With respect to their ears, this important difference is to be
observed between the sperm whale and the right. While the ear of
the former has an external opening, that of the latter is entirely
and evenly covered over with a membrane, so as to be quite
imperceptible from without.
Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the
world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear
which is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the
lens of Herschel's great telescope; and his ears capacious as the
porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or
sharper of hearing? Not at all.--Why then do you try to "enlarge"
your mind? Subtilize it.
Let us now with whatever levers and steam-engines we have at hand,
cant over the sperm whale's head, that it may lie bottom up;
then, ascending by a ladder to the summit, have a peep down the
mouth; and were it not that the body is now completely separated from
it, with a lantern we might descend into the great Kentucky Mammoth
Cave of his stomach.
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