CETACEA. 213 



transverse laminae, called whalebone, formed of a kind of fibrous 

 horn, fringed at the edges, which serve to retain the little animals 

 on which these enormous Cetacea feed. Their lower jaw, supported 

 by two osseous branches arched externally and towards the summit, 

 and completely unarmed, lodges a very thick and fleshy tongue, and 

 when the mouth is closed, envelopes the internal part of the upper 

 jaw, and the whalebone with which it is invested. These organs do 

 not allow whales to feed on such large animals as their size might 

 induce us to imagine. They live on fish, but principally on Worms, 

 Mollusca, and Zoophytes, selecting, it is said, the very smallest, 

 which become entangled in the filaments of the whalebone. Their 

 nostrils, better organised for the sense of smell than those of the 

 Dolphins, are furnished with some ethmoidal plates, and appear to 

 receive some small filaments from the olfactory nerve. Their caecum 

 is short. 



Bal. rnystketus^^l)!^.', Lacep. Get. pi. 2 and 3, under the name 

 of Nord-Caper, and Scoresby, Arct. Reg. II, pi. 12. (The Com- 

 mon Whale. )(2) It has long been considered the largest of all 

 animals j but from the late observations of captain Scoresby, it 

 appears that it scarcely ever exceeds seventy feet, a length fre- 

 quently surpassed by the wrinkle-bellied whales. It has no dor- 

 sal fin. To procure its fat or blubber, which is sometimes seve- 

 ral feet in thickness, and contains immense quantities of oil, 

 whole fleets are annually equipped. Formerly sufiiciently bold 

 to venture into our seas, it has gradually retired to the extreme 

 North, where the number is daily diminishing. Besides oil, 

 it produces black and flexible whalebone, eight or ten feet in 

 length, each individual having from eight to nine hundred strips 

 on each side of the palate. One hundred and twenty tuns of oil 

 are obtained from a single whale. Shell-fish attach themselves 

 to its skin, and multiply there as on a rock, and some of the 

 Balanus family even penetrate into it. It is asserted that these 



(1) The <fiiXcv* of Aristotle and ^lian, which was an enemy of the Dolphin, 

 appears to have been a large cetaceous animal armed with teeth ; the only true 

 "Whale known to Aristotle was his mysticeius, which had, says he, setx in the 

 mouth in place of teeth ; most probably the Whale, witli the wrinkled throat, of the 

 Mediterranean. It is thought, however, that Juvenal alludes to the common 

 Whale in the following line, 



" Quanto delphinis balxna britannica major;" 

 but the Latins applied the term Baljena, in a general way, to all the great Cetacea, 

 just as the people of the North do that of Whale, or Wall, and its derivatives, a 

 remark essentially requisite to those who study their writings. 



(2) The old figure of Martens, recopied Lacep. I, pi. 1, and in all other authors, 

 represents the head too long. 



