CHAPTER IV. 



THE POSITION OF WHALES IN THE SYSTEM AND 

 THEIR CLASSIFICATION 



IN order to pursue matters in logical order we 

 must go back, first of all, to the question raised 

 before, Why is a whale not a fish ? For the sake 

 of those who are not well versed in the facts of com- 

 parative anatomy it may be convenient to state briefly 

 a few main reasons for placing the whale among the 

 Mammalia, and not only not among the fish, but also 

 in a position remote from all other groups of verte- 

 brated animals that is, the Amphibia, Reptiles, and 

 Birds. A whale is a hot-blooded creature, breathing 

 by means of lungs, which lie in the interior of the 

 body in a definite chest cavity, shut off from the rest 

 of the cavity of the body (that which contains the 

 intestines, liver, etc.) by a largely muscular partition- 

 the diaphragm. It has (frequently) vestiges of the 

 hairs which cover the bodies of other mammals in 

 the presence of a few scattered hairs in the neigh- 

 bourhood of the mouth. It brings forth its young 

 alive, and suckles them with milk. The bones of the 

 skull are precisely those of other mammals, and only 

 differ slightly in their relative arrangement. These 



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