What then shall I liken the Sperm Whale to for fragrance, considering his magnitude?

So the usual running of the links to the SciTech Daily Review and a link to the article below. I should add that I am aware of the distinction between the sort of whale excrement referred to as the "brown stain" and ambergris. But one thing led to the other. And hovering just out of range is some Melvillian allegory that I am not quite willing to parse.

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A large, disconcertingly pretty bubble
trailing behind the whale like an enormous jellyfish.

From The Worst Jobs in Science 2007:

“Brown stain ahoy!” is not the cry most mariners long to hear, but for Rosalind Rolland, a senior researcher at the New England Aquarium in Boston, it’s a siren song. Rolland, along with a few lucky research assistants, combs Nova Scotia’s Bay of Fundy looking for endangered North Atlantic right whales. Actually, she’s not really looking for the whales—just their poo. “It surprised even me how much you can learn about a whale through its feces,” says Rolland, who recently published the most complete study of right whales ever conducted. “You can test for pregnancy, measure hormones and biotoxins, examine its genetics. You can even tell individuals apart.

Rolland pioneered whale-feces research in 1999. By 2003, she was frustrated by the small number of samples her poo patrol was collecting by blindly chasing whales on the open ocean. So she began taking along sniffer dogs that can detect whale droppings from as far as a mile away. When they bark, she points her research vessel in the direction of the brown gold, and as the boat approaches the feces—the excrement usually stays afloat for an hour after the deed is done and can be bright orange and oily depending on the type of plankton the whale feeds on—Rolland and her crew begin scooping up as much matter as they can using custom-designed nets. Samples are then placed in plastic jars and packed in ice (the largest chunks are just over a pound) to be shared with other researchers across North America. “We’ve literally been in fields of right-whale poop,” she marvels.

In the past few years, other whale researchers have adopted Rolland’s methods. Nick Gales of the Australia Antarctic Division now plies the Southern Ocean looking for endangered blue-whale dung, a pursuit that in 2003 led him to a scientific first. While tailing a minke whale, Gale’s team photographed what is believed to be the first bout of whale flatulence caught on film—a large, disconcertingly pretty bubble trailing behind the whale like an enormous jellyfish. “We stayed away from the bow after taking the picture,” Gales recalls. “It does stink.”

Dog to be world's first whale poop expert:

A dropout from drug-sniffing training (his gait was not acceptable), so far is able to identify heroin, marijuana and crack cocaine, as well as the droppings of such animals as grizzly bears, black bears, jaguars, wolverines, bobcats and cougars.

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Floating Gold: The Romance of Ambergris by Robert Cushman Murphy:

Strolling along a beach near Nome on a Sunday afternoon, he had startled a wolf in the act of eating a large chunk of carrion at the water’s edge. The animal beat a retreat, with its belly sagging, and inspection of the material that it had left aroused enough suspicion in the mind of my caller to make him gather it up, say nothing, and lug it all the way to New York. He was so well prepared for what I told him that the verdict brought only a slight increment of satisfaction. I remarked that although some philologists held that the word ambergris came from the same root as ambrosia, the food of the gods on Mt. Olympus, there was no precedent that would justify its use as a diet for predatory carnivores! I advised the man what to do with his supply, neglecting to ask his name, and I have neither seen nor heard of him since.

“To think,” was his parting comment, “if I’d been ten minutes sooner that damned wolf wouldn’t have cost me a five-thousand-dollar meal!”

Wikipedia: Ambergris:

During the Black Death in Europe, the people believed that carrying a ball of ambergris could help prevent them from getting the plague. This was because the fragrance covered the smell of the air which was believed to be the cause of plague.

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You're not putting that thing in my car.

Fragrant whale excrement lands fortune:

An Australian couple could reap a fragrant fortune after what they thought was an odd-looking tree stump turned out to be a rare lump of ambergris, a whale excretion used in perfumes and known as "floating gold."

Loralee and Leon Wright were walking along a remote beach near Streaky Bay in western South Australia state on a fishing trip three weeks ago when they saw the strange object.

Intrigued, they took a closer look, and Leon Wright, thinking it could have been some kind of cyst from a large marine animal, suggested they take the 32-pound lump home.

"She said 'You're not putting that thing in my car'," the Australian Broadcasting Corp. quoted marine ecologist Ken Jury as saying on its Web site on Wednesday.

Curiosity eventually got the better of the Wrights. Unable to find an answer on the Internet, they went back and got it two weeks later and described it to Jury.

"It immediately struck me as being ambergris--it couldn't be anything else," Jury said.

"It's actually belched out by the animal, would you believe, and those few across the world that have witnessed that or heard it say it's quite remarkable...apparently the sound of it travels for miles across the water," he said.

Jury, who is acting for the family, said ambergris can fetch between $20 and $65 a gram, The Age newspaper reported on Wednesday. That would make the Wrights' find worth at least $295,000.

Used in perfumes by ancient Egyptians and mythologized in literary classics like Herman Melville's "Moby Dick," ambergris is spewed out of the intestines of sperm whales.

Scientists theorize that it is produced to aid in the removal of hard, sharp objects like squid beaks that whales may eat.

The waxy, foul-smelling substance is lighter than water and can float for years, during which time it is cleansed by the sun and salt water and becomes hard, dark and waxy and develops a rich musky smell prized by perfumers around the world.

"The Egyptians used it," Jury said. "Certainly the Chinese did and they not only used it in perfumes, but they used to eat it and they used to give it as gifts."

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Fogo Von Slack, in his great work on Smells.

From Moby-Dick or the Whale by Herman Melville: Chapter 92: Ambergris:

Now this ambergris is a very curious substance, and so important as an article of commerce, that in 1791 a certain Nantucket-born Captain Coffin was examined at the bar of the English House of Commons on that subject. For at that time, and indeed until a comparatively late day, the precise origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself, a problem to the learned. Though the word ambergris is but the French compound for grey amber, yet the two substances are quite distinct. For amber, though at times found on the sea-coast, is also dug up in some far inland soils, whereas ambergris is never found except upon the sea. Besides, amber is a hard, transparent, brittle, odorless substance, used for mouth-pieces to pipes, for beads and ornaments; but ambergris is soft, waxy, and so highly fragrant and spicy, that it is largely used in perfumery, in pastiles, precious candles, hair-powders, and pomatum. The Turks use it in cooking, and also carry it to Mecca, for the same purpose that frankincense is carried to St. Peter's in Rome. Some wine merchants drop a few grains into claret, to flavor it.

Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale! Yet so it is. By some, ambergris is supposed to be the cause, and by others the effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale. How to cure such a dyspepsia it were hard to say, unless by administering three or four boat loads of Brandreth's pills, and then running out of harm's way, as laborers do in blasting rocks.

I have forgotten to say that there were found in this ambergris, certain hard, round, bony plates, which at first Stubb thought might be sailors' trowsers buttons; but it afterwards turned out that they were nothing more than pieces of small squid bones embalmed in that manner.

Now that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should be found in the heart of such decay; is this nothing? Bethink thee of that saying of St. Paul in Corinthians, about corruption and incorruption; how that we are sown in dishonour, but raised in glory. And likewise call to mind that saying of Paracelsus about what it is that maketh the best musk. Also forget not the strange fact that of all things of ill-savor, Cologne-water, in its rudimental manufacturing stages, is the worst.

I should like to conclude the chapter with the above appeal, but cannot, owing to my anxiety to repel a charge often made against whalemen, and which, in the estimation of some already biased minds, might be considered as indirectly substantiated by what has been said of the Frenchman's two whales. Elsewhere in this volume the slanderous aspersion has been disproved, that the vocation of whaling is throughout a slatternly, untidy business. But there is another thing to rebut. They hint that all whales always smell bad. Now how did this odious stigma originate?

I opine, that it is plainly traceable to the first arrival of the Greenland whaling ships in London, more than two centuries ago. Because those whalemen did not then, and do not now, try out their oil at sea as the Southern ships have always done; but cutting up the fresh blubber in small bits, thrust it through the bung holes of large casks, and carry it home in that manner; the shortness of the season in those Icy Seas, and the sudden and violent storms to which they are exposed, forbidding any other course. The consequence is, that upon breaking into the hold, and unloading one of these whale cemeteries, in the Greenland dock, a savor is given forth somewhat similar to that arising from excavating an old city grave-yard, for the foundations of a Lying-in-Hospital.

I partly surmise also, that this wicked charge against whalers may be likewise imputed to the existence on the coast of Greenland, in former times, of a Dutch village called Schmerenburgh or Smeerenberg, which latter name is the one used by the learned Fogo Von Slack, in his great work on Smells, a text-book on that subject. As its name imports (smeer, fat; berg, to put up), this village was founded in order to afford a place for the blubber of the Dutch whale fleet to be tried out, without being taken home to Holland for that purpose. It was a collection of furnaces, fat-kettles, and oil sheds; and when the works were in full operation certainly gave forth no very pleasant savor. But all this is quite different with a South Sea Sperm Whaler; which in a voyage of four years perhaps, after completely filling her hold with oil, does not, perhaps, consume fifty days in the business of boiling out; and in the state that it is casked, the oil is nearly scentless. The truth is, that living or dead, if but decently treated, whales as a species are by no means creatures of ill odor; nor can whalemen be recognised, as the people of the middle ages affected to detect a Jew in the company, by the nose. Nor indeed can the whale possibly be otherwise than fragrant, when, as a general thing, he enjoys such high health; taking abundance of exercise; always out of doors; though, it is true, seldom in the open air. I say, that the motion of a Sperm Whale's flukes above water dispenses a perfume, as when a musk-scented lady rustles her dress in a warm parlor. What then shall I liken the Sperm Whale to for fragrance, considering his magnitude? Must it not be to that famous elephant, with jewelled tusks, and redolent with myrrh, which was led out of an Indian town to do honour to Alexander the Great?

For perhaps the most complete online reference see: Ambergris: A Pathfinder and Annotated Bibliography by Randy D. Ralph, Ph.D.. Of particular fascination is the section on Objects of Art with the enigmatic Negress and the stunning Sargent piece:

The Negress.
A 16th century figurine carved from a single lump of ambergris by an anonymous Italian (possibly German) goldsmith and ornamented with jewels of gold, pearls,rubies and brilliants with flower forms of white enamel.

Fumée d'Ambre Gris

John Singer Sargent, 1880.

Update: In one of those uncanny Jungian synchronicities, I am currently watching the Futurama episode, Three Hundred Big Boys, concerning a whale and ambergris:

Whale Biologist: I don't want your watch. You're covered in precious ambergris.

Kif: Precious ambergris?

[The whale biologist sighs and presses a button on his belt. A holographic image of Roseanne appears.]

Holo-Roseanne: Ambergris. Noun. A grease-like product of the sperm whale's digestive tract that is used as a base in the finest perfumes. This has been Roseanne, your guide to the world of facts.

[The holo-encyclopedia shuts off.]

Whale Biologist: You heard Roseanne. Scrape off the priceless ambergris and I'll let you go!

Kif: Or better yet I'll simply shed my skin!

[He struggles as he takes it off.]

And later:

On the other side of the room Leela is now talking to Whitey and Kif is reunited with Amy.]

Kif: So you see the putrid waxy substance I was coated with was -

Amy: Not precious ambergris?

Kif: Yes! And I managed to sneak some out in a usual place! Ta-da! [He hands it to Amy.] Using that, I'll make you a perfume of lilac and jasmine and frankenberry!

Amy: Oh Kif, it's so romantic I can't even wait! I'm gonna wear it right now!

[She puts some on. Her tattoo splutters. Everyone else chokes at he stench.]

Mom: Who smells like freaking porpus hork?

Amy: I do! Kiss me Kif!