Moby-Dick; or, The Whale · Moby-Dick, ch. 68 · block 4

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.

Herman Melville · 1851
Project Gutenberg #15, credited to Eugene F. Irey; updated 10 June 2026. Based on the first American edition, Harper & Brothers, 1851, according to the source catalog.
Mapped print edition: Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1851; First American edition).
Passage ¶1631: p. 341 (Scanned p. 341)
View the scanned edition
Print pages are mapped to the Project Gutenberg transcription displayed here; this does not substitute the print edition’s text.
Locations cover whole source blocks in chapters 1–135 and the epilogue, plus the title leaf. The reading text remains Project Gutenberg #15 and can differ from this printing; consult the linked scan when quoting the print edition. The 23 source-note references have their own mapped pages. Front matter beyond the title, one decorative break, and the modern transcriber’s note are not mapped. Bracketed labels [i] and [635] are supplied for unnumbered leaves. Alignment does not certify verbatim identity.
Page alignment uses the transcription by Wikisource contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Gloss address: 68.4 · chapter.paragraph · global ¶1631
Frozen text and counting rules: g1-582503627a093f94.
Passage preview. Read in context for the complete text, notes and references.