THE FITNESS OF RIGHT WHALES 73 



ment for shunting forward the spout-shaped glottis 

 (the entrance to the windpipe) so as to project into 

 the posterior opening of the nasal passage at the 

 back of the mouth. Thus the Baleen Whale swim- 

 ming with its huge mouth yawning, so as to catch 

 myriads of small fry, is not itself drowned. It is 

 interesting that a very similar adaptation is seen 

 when the crocodile is drowning its prey, and when 

 the young marsupial in its mother's pouch is having 

 milk injected down its gullet. 



The story goes that a Yankee visitor to the Zoo, 

 after a prolonged scrutiny of the giraffe, turned 

 away with the remark : " I don't believe it." If 

 he had been able to give the same attention to his 

 own New England Right Whale, he might well have 

 said the same. Black in color, a Colossus 54 

 feet long, with a head occupying about a fourth of 

 the whole, with a neck as short as the giraffe's is 

 long (yet with the same number of vertebrae), 

 with about 250 plates of black baleen hanging 

 down from the roof of the mouth on each side, 

 and sometimes reaching a length of 7 feet what 

 a quaint creature! The plates of whalebone 

 illustrate one of Nature's evolutionary methods, 

 making the new out of the old, for they are exag- 

 gerations and cornifications of the transverse pala- 

 tal ridges to be seen on the roof of the mouth in 

 many other mammals. How striking, again, is the 

 apparently disturbed topography, the nostrils 

 far back on the top of the head, the inconspicuous 

 eye away down at the posterior corner of the mouth, 



