SOME INTERNAL STRUCTURES 81 



("coste de balene " ; literally, whales' ribs), with which 

 ladies nowadays make their corsets and stiffen out 

 their dresses, and which the beadles of some churches 

 carry as wands these are certain pieces cut off and 

 drawn out from that which serves as eyelids for the 

 whale, and which covers his eyes, and which is 

 furnished at its extremity with a kind of long, stiff 

 hair. This is what the Latins call the pretentures, 

 and which they say enables the animal to direct his 

 course through the sea." " The latter notion," as Sir 

 William Flower points out, "is probably connected with 

 the old feudal law cited by Blackstone, that the tails 

 of all whales belonged to the Queen as a perquisite 

 to furnish her Majesty's wardrobe with whalebone." 

 Scaliger, too, in his commentaries upon Aristotle, ob- 

 serves of whalebone, "In superciliis lamellas habet 

 quae cum caput mergit attolluntur ab aqua : atque 

 ita videndi potestas sit : ubi vero ex aqua exerit, 

 concidunt lamellae, atque tegunt oculos." Probably 

 this and the former view is due in part to the tiny 

 eye which escaped attention, and indeed seems on 

 account of the peculiar development of the skull to 

 have an abnormal situation. 



Nevertheless, at the same period at which Belon 

 wrote the accurate location of whalebone was under- 

 stood. For Olaus Magnus described in a stranded 

 Rorqual (?) the whalebone, of which he remarked : 

 ' Palato adhaerebant quasi laminae corneae," and 

 proceeded to point out that these laminae were not 

 all of the same size, a fact which is well known to be 

 the case with the laminae of whalebone. 



