In the vignettes and other embellishments of some ancient books you will at times meet with very curious touches at the whale, where all manner of spouts, jets d'eau, hot springs and cold, Saratoga and Baden-Baden, come bubbling up from his unexhausted brain. In the title-page of the original edition of the "Advancement of Learning" you will find some curious whales.
然而，所有这些图不但不正确，而且那幅关于神鲸或称格陵兰鲸（也就是露脊鲸）的图画，甚至象斯哥斯比这个对这方面富有经验的人物，也都认为它连一半都不象。
But quitting all these unprofessional attempts, let us glance at those pictures of leviathan purporting to be sober, scientific delineations, by those who know. In old Harris's collection of voyages there are some plates of whales extracted from a Dutch book of voyages, A.D. 1671, entitled "A Whaling Voyage to Spitzbergen in the ship Jonas in the Whale, Peter Peterson of Friesland, master." In one of those plates the whales, like great rafts of logs, are represented lying among ice-isles, with white bears running over their living backs. In another plate, the prodigious blunder is made of representing the whale with perpendicular flukes.
但是，集所有这种错误百出之大成的，还得算那个科学家弗里德里克。居维埃，也就是那位著名的男爵的弟弟。一八三六年，他出版了一本《鲸博物史》，在那里边，他画出一幅他所谓抹香鲸的图。你在把这幅图拿给随便哪个南塔开特人看之前，你最好得有立刻离开南塔开特的准备。总之，弗里德里克。居维埃的抹香鲸并不是一条抹香鲸，而是一只大南瓜。自然啦，他从来没有去捕过鲸（这种人也不大会有这种机会），不过，究竟他是从哪里弄到那幅图，谁知道他？也许他跟他的前辈的科学家德马雷斯一样，是从他那原始的流产品，也就是说，是从中国画得来的。而那些拿着画笔，蘸着许多希奇古怪的色杯和笔洗儿的中国小伙子，能给我们一些什么呢？
Then again, there is an imposing quarto, written by one Captain Colnett, a Post Captain in the English navy, entitled "A Voyage round Cape Horn into the South Seas, for the purpose of extending the Spermaceti Whale Fisheries."
至于街上所看到的，那些挂在鲸油商铺门前，由漆招牌匠画出来的鲸，又该怎么说呢？它们一般都是理查三世（理查三世（1452—1485）——英国皇帝，以强悍凶残见称。）的鲸，有着单峰骆驼似的背峰，十分野蛮；