HAIR OF WHALES 



341 



dimensions of the bigger Whales are probably due to the fact that 

 measurements have been taken, not in a straight line from snout 

 to tail, but along the bulging sides of the Cetacean, rendered even 

 more convex than in nature by decomposition, and by pressure 

 due to the immense tonnage of the creature. 



The Cetacea are the most perfectly aquatic of all mammals ; 

 they never leave the waters which they inhabit. It is true that 

 legends have represented them as pasturing upon the shore 

 Aelian spoke of Dolphins basking in the sun's rays upon the 

 sand ; and the " Devil Fish " of California, Rhachianectes (see 

 p. 357) has given rise to improbable stories but they are 



FIG. 180. Killer. Orca gladiator. x- 4 V (After True.) 



apparently only legends. Indeed a stranded Whale cannot 

 live long, for it is unable to breathe, the comparatively feeble 

 breast being crushed by its own weight. In accordance with 

 the purely aquatic habit, we find a modification of the outward 

 form of the body (and as we shall see later of many of the in- 

 ternal organs), which renders the Cetacea externally unlike all 

 other mammals. The form is fish : like, the fore-limbs are paddles, 

 the tail is expanded into two horizontal flukes, which serve to 

 propel the creature through the water. 



The skin is smooth and shiny, so smooth and so shiny that it 

 1ms often been compared to coach leather. But nevertheless 

 they are not entirely without that most essential character of the 

 class Mammalia, a coating of hair. The hairy covering is, how- 

 ever, reduced to the very smallest proportions ; it is represented 



