评论
打印
In this book is an outline purporting to be a "Picture of a Physeter or Spermaceti whale, drawn by scale from one killed on the coast of Mexico, August, 1793, and hoisted on deck." I doubt not the captain had this veracious picture taken for the benefit of his marines. To mention but one thing about it, let me say that it has an eye which applied, according to the accompanying scale, to a full grown sperm whale, would make the eye of that whale a bow-window some five feet long. Ah, my gallant captain, why did ye not give us Jonah looking out of that eye!
这本书写明是“根据一七九三年八月在墨西哥沿海所捕杀。后来被吊上甲板的一条抹香鲸的实体，按比例尺所画的写真图”的一个略图。我肯定这个舰长所以要画这个画，纯然是为他的船务打算的。对此只消指出这一点就够了，我不妨说，根据所附的比例尺看来，画在那条大抹香鲸身上的一只眼睛，就使得那只鲸眼睛成了一扇五英尺来长的弓形窗。我的勇敢的舰长啊，你为什么不让我们看到约拿打那只眼睛探出头来向外张望呢！
Nor are the most conscientious compilations of Natural History for the benefit of the young and tender, free from the same heinousness of mistake. Look at that popular work "Goldsmith's Animated Nature." In the abridged London edition of 1807, there are plates of an alleged "whale" and a "narwhale." I do not wish to seem inelegant, but this unsightly whale looks much like an amputated sow; and, as for the narwhale, one glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in this nineteenth century such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine upon any intelligent public of schoolboys.
就是那些为青少年打算，极其煞费苦心编撰出来的《博物史》也摆脱不了同样重大的错误。请看那本通俗作品《戈德史密斯的活自然界》（奥利弗·戈德史密斯（1728—1774）——爱尔兰作家，《维克斐牧师传》的作者，初期作品中有《博物史》一类著作。这里所指的是《地球和活自然界史》一书。）吧。在这本一八零七年出版于伦敦的节本中，有几幅所谓"鲸"和"独角鲸"的图版。我不想显得很不文雅，可是，这种见所未见的鲸，看看却真象一只给砍断了四脚的母猪；至于说到那条独角鲸，只消一瞥就够叫人发楞，在十九世纪的今天，这样一种半马半鹰的怪物，居然还能以假乱真地诓骗任何聪明小学。
Then, again, in 1825, Bernard Germain, Count de Lacepede, a great naturalist, published a scientific systemized whale book, wherein are several pictures of the different species of the Leviathan.
那么，再看一看一八二五年，一个大博物学家贝尔纳·热尔曼，即拉塞佩德伯爵所著的一本科学分析的有关鲸的书吧，在那本书里，有几张种类不同的大海兽的图画。
