The fish properly called the whale, for whose sake our ships chiefly undertake the voyage to Spitzbergen, is differing from other whales in his finns and mouth, which is without teeth, but instead thereof long, black, somewhat broad and horny flakes, all jagged like hairs: he differs from the finn-fish in his finns, for the finn-fish hath a great finn on his back, but the whale, properly so called, hath none on his back: and there is two finns behind his eyes of a bigness proportionable to the whale, covered with a thick black skin, delicately marbled with white strokes; or as you see in marble, trees, houses or the like things represented. In the tail of one the fishes was marbled very delicately this number, 1222, very even and exact, as if they had been painted on it on purpose. This marbling on the whale is like veins in a piece of wood, that run streight through, or else round about the center or pith of a tree, and so go both white and yellow strokes, through the thick and the thin strokes, that is like parchment or vellam, and give to the whale an incomparable beauty and ornament. When these finns are cut up, you find underneath the thick skin bones that look like unto a man's hand, when it is opened and the fingers are expanded or spread; between these joynts there are stiff sinews, which flye up and rebound again if you fling them hard against the ground, as the sinews of great fish, as of a sturgeon, or of some four footed beasts generally do.