The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-07-06
JONAH AND THE WHALE.
SCIENTISTS ARE NOW MAKING 4 CAST
or One So That They Can Know All
 About the Big Animals.

Did the whale swallow Jonah? The question, which has been the subject of so much dispute has been revived among government scientists by the expedition sent to Newfoundland by the Smithsonian institution in pursuit of finback whale. The whale sought is the biggest of several species of finback whales. It is the largest animal now existing on the earth. But was it of the particular kind of ceteacean that ate Joseph? Science, with the data now at hand, has been able to sift the matter down to some extent and, as one might say, to boil down the evidence. As result the fact may be considered as de- finitely established that, notwithstand- ing widespread incredulity on the sub ject--an incredulity which has striven to classify the scriptural account as ei- ther fiction or allegory-t there is nothing inherently Impossible in the Jonah sto- ". The whale might have swallowed and accommodated in its belly two Jo- nahs, if there had been a pair of them. Accurate figures in regard to the capac- ity of whale-the first published, and indorsed by the highest scientific .au- thority-will be given presently. But meantime 1t is desirable to mention the fact that the Smithsonian expedition was organized and is directed by Dr. Frederick W. True who has sent F. A. Lucas, a famous expert, to Balena sta- ton, on the south coast of Newfound- land, with instructions to obtain at all hazards cast of one of the monstrous cetaceans E r
 Mr. Lucas is now on the spot, and having secured the whale, is engaged in making a mold of it. Having provided himself in advance with about twenty barrels of plaster of paris, fetched from St. Johns, he mixes the stuff with water in a sort of bin of blanks, such as ma sons use for similar purposes, and then pours it in bueketfuls over the carcass. The animal being about ninety feet long, with a weight of thirty tons, it must be tackled a bit at time, work ing from tail to nose, in order to ob-. tain a series of plaster sections, which, duly fitted together, shall represent the complete creature. The plaster sec tions will be packed in about fifty large boxes, and forwarded to Washington, where, in the workshops of the Smith sonian institution, they will be used for making complete cast of the whole in papier rnacile. For this. purpose the treasury department will contribute a great quantity of the pulp that comes from the pot in which Uncle Sam's old paper money is boiled after being re- deemed, so that the transmogrified cet- acean will actually represent, in a cer- tain sense, value of many millions of dollars. The cast Ca mere shell, for the sake of ligntness) will be perfect re production of the whale, and after be- ing painted, will be the literal image of the original animal, even to the small est detail. It will be hung up for exhi- bition in a great hall of the new build ing that is to be erected for the national museum. IN @
 Now, when it comes to the question whether this was the kind of whale that swallowed Jonah, science is inclined to negative opinion. The throat of a finback whale, notwithstanding the enormous size of the animal, is so small that a mans arm could hardly be thrust down it. Besides, the creature is not a beast of prey; it feeds upon small crusteans and other animacules which float about at the surface of the sea--in short, whale of gentle man ners, and not at all of the sort that would absarb a phophet at a gulp. The right" or Greenland whale is the next biggest whale. It attains length of seventy feet, and is the principal source of both whale oil and whalebone. But, of a certainty, 1t was not the whale that ate Jonah, irasmuch as it feeds, like the ffnback upon tiny pelagic ani- maelues, and could not possibly swal- low a mans leg, much less his whole body. Such a peaceable creature is. it that it has not even any teeth, but sifts it's provender through a sort of screen, which is composed of a meterial known commercially as Whalebone.
 There are several other species of whales, most of them much smaller, but all the available evidence points to the conclusion that the particular ceta- cean which took in Jonah, and spewed him up subsequently, upon dry land, was none other than the sperm whale an animal sixty feet long when full grown, of a predatory inclination, with a throat big enough to swallow man, and possessed of stomach of sufficien; capacity to hold him. Such, in fact, is the .'cachalot" (commonly so-called), which, under ordinary circumstances, feeds upon cuttlefsh. Perhaps the scripturaI specimen nlistook Jonah, swimming in the water, for large cephalopnd. Dr. F. E. Beddard, anato- mist of the geological society of London, has recently published an opinion to the effect that an adult sperm whale might without difficulty swallow man. Of course, Jonah may have been a small an-some men are fully twice as big as others and, if so, the problem ap- pears more easy of solution. The ca chalot, be it realized, is a true beast of prey, frequently attacking the giant squid Ca monstrous cuttlefish which has tentacles fifty feet long1, and to sup pose that it would balk at a human be- ing, if hungry lis absurd.
 Once down the throat of the whale Jonah found himself in a sort of spher- ical chamber, which a German anato- mist has called the "crop,' and from which he passed on to the stomach pro- per, a fairly roomy place, cylindrical in shape and about seven feet long by