Word: whaled
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...YEAR OF THE WHALE by Victor B. Scheffer. 213 pages. Scribner...
When the Psalmist sang "O Lord, how manifold are thy works!" (104:24], he saved for his climactic example the whale-nature's piece de resistance and everybody's favorite metaphor. But the whale, alas, is referred to more often than studied. A century ago, Herman Melville could say of the sperm whale, "His is an unwritten life." Then he proceeded to write it, of course...
What Moby Dick did not reveal, The Year of the Whale does-and on terms that can stand the comparison. Victor B. Scheffer is a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but his facts tick off the tongue of a poet. The result is a brilliant and affectionate one-mammal bestiary...
Question of Sex. The sperm whale is a saga of the awesome statistic. Dr. Scheffer begins the year in "a quiet month in autumn in the northeastern Pacific," with his calf whale backing into the world tail first-14 feet long, weighing a ton, ready to swim. Nursing for two years on mother's milk, the little leviathan will gain seven pounds a day. Sexual maturity will arrive at the age of nine, but he will not reach full growth until he is 30 to 45. Then he may be as much as 60 feet long and 60 tons...
...behind all these gigantic dimensions lies an immeasurable mystery. Why, for instance, does a Moby Dick attack a ship? Perhaps because the bull whale sees it as a "ship-animal," a sexual rival for his cows, Dr. Scheffer speculates. Yet he is not too sure...