Of Whales & Glands "[He is] gifted with such wondrous power and velocity in swimming as to defy all present pursuit from man," wrote Herman Melville of the finback whale. "This leviathan seems the banished and unconquerable Cain of his race." Captain Ahab and his men felt the same way, concentrated on other, slower beasts (notably the sperm whale, a species to which Moby Dick himself belonged). But today, with steam power and steel cables, the "unconquerable Cains" of the ocean, the fin and the blue whales,* are hunted vigorously—and among the most interested hunters is modern...
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