Most valuable of all whale-products, the costliest commodity on this earth ounce for ounce with the one exception of radium, is ambergris.  As amber was once considered “the frozen tears of seagulls,” so ambergris for ages puzzled the ancients.  Some called it “the solidified foam of the sea,” with others it was a “fungoidal growth of the ocean analogous to that on trees.”  When people in the old days came across anything exceedingly costly they wanted to eat it, on the same principle which makes the baby put each new gift into his mouth.  So we have historic record of pearl soup a la Cleopatra, and dishes dashed with ambergris.  Milton sings of,—­

“Beasts of chase, or fowl of game,
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled,
Grisamber-steamed.”

What is this choice tidbit?  It is a morbid secretion of the intestines of the sick Sperm-whale, and sells for from thirty to forty dollars an ounce.  Ambergris, if discovered in the animal itself, is always in a dead or dying body, but it is usually found floating on the ocean or cast up on the shore.  Many a day, as kiddies on Vancouver Island beaches, have we turned over bunches of kelp, trying to smell out that solid, fatty, inflammable dull grey substance with its sweet earthy odour.  The present-day use of ambergris is to impart to perfumes a floral fragrance.  It has the power to intensify and fix any odour.  In pharmacy, it is regarded as a cardiac and anti-spasmodic and as a specific against the rabies.  For years it has been used in sacerdotal rites of the church; and suitors of old times sought with it to charm their mistresses.  The dying sperm, spouting up the ghost, offers of his very vitals to aid the lover and serve the church.

Fascinating are the finds of ambergris.  The barque Sea-Fox of New Bedford, in 1866, off the coast of Arabia, took a one hundred and fifty-six pound mass of ambergris, which was sold to the Arabs of Zanzibar for ten thousand dollars in gold.  The Adeline Gibbs, in the same year, took one hundred and thirty-two pounds from a bull-sperm south of St. Helena, and sold the hunk for twenty-three thousand dollars.  Three winters ago an Arctic whaling-crew put into Seattle, and there leaked out the interesting story of how, not recognising the priceless unguent, they had greased their oars, masts, and knee-boots with “a big lump of ambergrease.”

In modern whaling not an ounce of the carcase is cast as rubbish to the void.  The intestines make a soft kid which takes any dye and is largely used for artistic leather-work.  The size of these immense strips makes possible splendid belts for machinery with a minimum of joinings.  The chemically-macerated bones are turned into an “indestructible” crockery-ware which is far more enduring than anything made of vegetable-fibre.  The Beluga gives us the best shoe-strings in the world.  You can lace your shoes with a Beluga lace for two years and be sure it will not break the morning you are in an especial hurry to catch an inter-Reuben train.