![]() Though in life it remains perfectly fluid, yet, upon exposure to the air, after death, it soon begins to concrete sending forth beautiful crystalline shoots, as when the first thin delicate ice is just forming in water. Nor is this precious substance found unalloyed in any other part of the creature. Moreover, as that of Heidelburgh was always replenished with the most excellent of the wines of the Rhenish valleys, so the tun of the whale contains by far the most precious of all his oily vintages namely, the highly-prized spermaceti, in its absolutely pure, limpid, and odoriferous state. And as that famous great tierce is mystically carved in front, so the whale’s vast plaited forehead forms innumerable strange devices for the emblematical adornment of his wondrous tun. The upper part, known as the Case, may be regarded as the great Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale. The lower subdivided part, called the junk, is one immense honeycomb of oil, formed by the crossing and recrossing, into ten thousand infiltrated cells, of tough elastic white fibres throughout its whole extent. ![]() A quoin is a solid which differs from a wedge in having its sharp end formed by the steep inclination of one side, instead of the mutual tapering of both sides. I know not that it has been defined before. It belongs to the pure nautical mathematics.
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