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But it may be fancied , that from the naked skeleton of the stranded whale , accurate hints may be derived touching his true form . Not at all . For it is one of the more curious things about this Leviathan , that his skeleton gives very little idea of his general shape . Though Jeremy Bentham’s skeleton , which hangs for candelabra in the library of one of his executors , correctly conveys the idea of a burly - browed utilitarian old gentleman , with all Jeremy’s other leading personal characteristics ; yet nothing of this kind could be inferred from any leviathan’s articulated bones . In fact , as the great Hunter says , the mere skeleton of the whale bears the same relation to the fully invested and padded animal as the insect does to the chrysalis that so roundingly envelopes it . This peculiarity is strikingly evinced in the head , as in some part of this book will be incidentally shown . It is also very curiously displayed in the side fin , the bones of which almost exactly answer to the bones of the human hand , minus only the thumb . This fin has four regular bone - fingers , the index , middle , ring , and little finger . But all these are permanently lodged in their fleshy covering , as the human fingers in an artificial covering . “ However recklessly the whale may sometimes serve us , ” said humorous Stubb one day , “ he can never be truly said to handle us without mittens . ” For all these reasons , then , any way you may look at it , you must needs conclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last . True , one portrait may hit the mark much nearer than another , but none can hit it with any very considerable degree of exactness . So there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like . And the only mode in which you can derive even a tolerable idea of his living contour , is by going a whaling yourself ; but by so doing , you run no small risk of being eternally stove and sunk by him . Wherefore , it seems to me you had best not be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this Leviathan . CHAPTER 56 . Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales , and the True Pictures of Whaling Scenes . In connexion with the monstrous pictures of whales , I am strongly tempted here to enter upon those still more monstrous stories of them which are to be found in certain books , both ancient and modern , especially in Pliny , Purchas , Hackluyt , Harris , Cuvier , etc . But I pass that matter by .
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