1 32 A BOOK OF WHALES 



account, an abridgement of his, is borrowed from Sir 



William Flower :- 



" How these immensely long blades depending 

 vertically from the palate were packed into a mouth, 

 the height of which was scarcely more than half 

 their length, was a mystery not solved until a few 

 years ago. Captain David Gray, of Peterhead, 

 at my request, first gave us a clear idea of the 

 arrangement of the baleen in the Greenland whale, 

 and showed that the purpose of its wonderful elas- 

 ticity was not, primarily at least, the benefit of the 

 corset and umbrella makers, but that it was essential 

 for the correct performance of its functions. . . . The 

 length and delicate structure of the baleen provides 

 an efficient strainer or hair sieve, by which the water 

 can be drained off. If the baleen were, as in the 

 rorquals, short and rigid, and only of the length of 

 the aperture between the upper and lower jaws when 

 the mouth was shut, when the jaws were separated 

 a space would be left beneath it through which the 

 water and the minute particles of food would escape 

 together. But instead of this, the long, slender, 

 brush-like ends of the whalebone blades, when the 

 mouth is closed, fold back, the front ones passing 

 below the hinder ones in a channel lying between 

 the tongue and the bone of the lower jaw. When 

 the mouth is opened their elasticity causes them to 

 straighten out like a bow that is unbent, so that at 

 whatever distance the jaws are separated the strainer 



' Essays on Museums, etc. Macmillarfs, 1898, p. 221. 



