84 A BOOK OF WHALES 



apparatus is formed. The fine hairs entangle the 

 minute creatures upon which the Greenland whale 

 feeds, and at the same time allows the water to escape 

 through the sides of the mouth between the lips. A 

 more detailed description of the mechanism of the 

 whalebone in the Greenland whale will be found under 

 the account of that whale. 



It has been suggested that certain transverse lines 

 upon the plates of baleen are annual rings. In this 

 event the Greenland whale lives to an age of nine 

 hundred years ! 



The use of whalebone for ladies' stays, and 

 formerly for the ribs of umbrellas, is well known. 

 But it may be one of those things not so generally 

 known that certain rich silks which "stand of them- 

 selves" owe some of their firmness to very thin shreds 

 of whalebone incorporated with the silk threads ! 



Another little known use of whalebone was its 

 employment in the thirteenth century as plumes for 

 helmets. This use is proved by two passages from 

 William the Breton, where the Count of Boulogne 

 is described as wearing upon his helmet the "Branchia 

 Balaenae Britici . . . ponti." This reference has been 

 collected by M. Fischer in his careful account of the 

 Biscayan whale, to which further reference will be 

 made below when that species comes to be treated of. 

 Whalebone is still a costly article. Mr. Southwell, in 

 an article in the Zoologist for 1897 (p. 56) upon the 

 whale fishery of the preceding year, observes that the 

 value of the "bone" was ^2000 per ton. As twelve 

 Right whales produced 135^ cwts. of whalebone, the 

 results of a successful whaling cruise are considerable. 



