THE EXTERNAL FORM OF WHALES 35 



apertures additional to the nostrils. According to 

 Professor Kiikenthal it was the celebrated anatomist 

 and embryologist, Karl von Baer, who in 1826 first 

 showed clearly from anatomical considerations that 

 the whale could not spout forth a volume of sea- 

 water ; the water which does actually leave the blow 

 hole is simply the breath of the creature condensed, 

 mingled often with a little of the surface water of the 

 sea, which the whale disturbs by commencing the act 

 of expiration when still a little way beneath the 

 surface of the water. Rapp, however, deservedly 

 considered an authority upon the Cetacea, went back 

 to the earlier view, and held that the spouting was 

 a means of getting rid of the abundant water taken 

 in with the food. After this date there were re- 

 currences to the correct view, and again lapses there- 

 from. There is now no doubt about the matter at all. 



As to the actual structure of the blow holes there 

 are some important facts which must be dealt with, 

 though briefly. The internal part of the nose in man 

 and in other mammals serves an olfactory as well as 

 a respiratory function. The sense of smell is there 

 located. In the whales this sense, as is evinced by 

 the structure of the brain, is rudimentary or absent, 

 and the nostrils therefore have but one function to 

 perform, i.e., that of taking in and expelling respira- 

 tory air. 



Moseley (" Notes of a Naturalist on the Challenger"} 

 described the blowing of a hump back which followed 

 the Challenger for several days in the South Pacific : 

 " The appearance of a whale's spout as seen from the 



