Moby Dick

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no external nose; and that what nose he has--his spout hole--is on the
top of his head; you observe that his eyes and ears are at the sides
of his head, nearly one third of his entire length from the front.
Wherefore, you must now have perceived that the front of the Sperm
Whale's head is a dead, blind wall, without a single organ or tender
prominence of any sort whatsoever. Furthermore, you are now to consider
that only in the extreme, lower, backward sloping part of the front of
the head, is there the slightest vestige of bone; and not till you
get near twenty feet from the forehead do you come to the full cranial
development. So that this whole enormous boneless mass is as one wad.
Finally, though, as will soon be revealed, its contents partly comprise
the most delicate oil; yet, you are now to be apprised of the nature of
the substance which so impregnably invests all that apparent effeminacy.
In some previous place I have described to you how the blubber wraps the
body of the whale, as the rind wraps an orange. Just so with the head;
but with this difference: about the head this envelope, though not so
thick, is of a boneless toughness, inestimable by any man who has not