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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of the mandibles are widely separated posteriorly, and have a still 

 further outward sweep before they meet at the symphysis in front, 

 giving the floor of the mouth the shape of an immense spoon. The 

 baleen-blades attain the number of three hundred and fifty or more on 

 each side, and those in the middle of the series have a length of ten or 

 even twelve feet. They are black in color, fine and highly elastic in 

 texture, and fray out at the inner edge and ends into long, delicate, 

 soft, almost silky, but very tough hairs. 



Fig. 5. Skull op Greenland Whale, showing Whalebone. 



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 elasticity 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. It 

 may here be mentioned that the modification of the mouth-structure of 

 the right whale is entirely in relation to its food. It is by this appa- 

 ratus that it is enabled to avail itself of the minute but highly nutri- 

 tious crustaceans and pteropods which swarm in immense shoals in the 

 seas it frequents. The large mouth enables it to take in at one time a 

 sufficient quantity of water filled with these small organisms, and the 

 length and delicate structure of the baleen make it 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 



