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I have several such dried bits, which I use for marks in my whale-books. It is transparent, as I said before; and being laid upon the printed page, I have sometimes pleased myself with fancying it exerted a magnifying influence. At any rate, it is pleasant to read about whales through their own spectacles, as you may say. But what I am driving at here is this. That same infinitely thin, isinglass substance, which, I admit, invests the entire body of the whale, is not so much to be regarded as the skin of the creature, as the skin of the skin, so to speak; for it were simply ridiculous to say, that the proper skin of the tremendous whale is thinner and more tender than the skin of a new-born child. But no more of this.
我就有几片这样的干鲸皮，我把它用来做我那些鲸学书的书签。这种东西，如上所述，是透明的，而且把它放在书页上，我有时还会自得其乐地认为它有一种放大的作用。总之，可以这样说，用鲸皮镜来读鲸学书，真是一件快事。不过，我在这里要说的却是这样。我认为，这种包在整个鲸身上的很薄的、云母片似的东西，似乎不很能够把它当作动物的皮，当做皮肤的皮，因为如果把可怕的大鲸那种正式的皮，说得象是比初生的婴孩的皮肤还要嫩、还要薄，那简直是滑天下之大稽了。可是，事实上就是如此。
Assuming the blubber to be the skin of the whale; then, when this skin, as in the case of a very large Sperm Whale, will yield the bulk of one hundred barrels of oil; and, when it is considered that, in quantity, or rather weight, that oil, in its expressed state, is only three fourths, and not the entire substance of the coat; some idea may hence be had of the enormousness of that animated mass, a mere part of whose mere integument yields such a lake of liquid as that. Reckoning ten barrels to the ton, you have ten tons for the net weight of only three quarters of the stuff of the whale's skin.
假定鲸脂就是鲸皮，那么，就一条十分大的抹香鲸说来，这层皮就会出产重达一百桶的油，而且再就它的量或者不如说就它的重量来考虑一下，这种油，按它榨出来的情况来说，还不过是四分之三的油量，并不是它那层应的整个油量。
