A chapter in which Melville touches on a taboo that disturbs him

Odd to read a chapter in "Moby-Dick" in which Melville is so clearly wrong, so sadly wrong - in which he talks about the possible extinction of the whales, compares them with the American Bison/Buffalo which he knows to have been nearly wiped out by hunting, and then he argues that the whale could never be extinguished because the ocean is so vast and they would have so many places of refuge, particularly in the polar ice - would that it were so, as we see today how we have come close to wiping out the species. Humankind is a much more powerful ecological force than a 19th-century writer could imagine. Through the 19th-20th centuries we learned how small a space we occupied in the universe, but only in the late 20th century did we begin to learn how great a space we occupy on this planet. Some still doubt it, amazingly. Other very odd chapter late in Moby-Dick is Ahab's Leg, in which Melville obliquely explains the true source of Ahab's animus toward the whale - before the voyage, his ivory leg splintered and "nearly pierced his groin" - but Melville seems to imply - very difficult passage, I had to read it twice - that the splintered leg destroyed Ahab's penis or balls, leaving him wounded and impotent. Thus, his desire for revenge, and also for the occasional focus on the phallic aspect of the whale (even the dissection of the penis and removal of the foreskin, see previous post). Odd how difficult it is for Melville to discuss this directly - the language of Moby-Dick is often dark and obscure, but in the chapter it seems Melville has touched on a taboo that it actually disturbs him to confront.