Moby Dick by Herman Melville Chapter 80 Page 1

If the Sperm Whale be physiognomically a Sphinx, to the phrenologist his brain seems that geometrical circle which it is impossible to square.

In the full-grown creature the skull will measure at least twenty feet in length. Unhinge the lower jaw, and the side view of this skull is as the side of a moderately inclined plane resting throughout on a level base. But in life — as we have elsewhere seen — this inclined plane is angularly filled up, and almost squared by the enormous superincumbent mass of the junk and sperm.

At the high end the skull forms a crater to bed that part of the mass; while under the long floor of this crater — in another cavity seldom exceeding ten inches in length and as many in depth — reposes the mere handful of this monster’s