32 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF 



widely extended. A stream of water consequently 

 enters its capacious mouth, and along with it large 

 quantities of water-insects, &c. ; the water escapes again 

 at the sides, but the food becomes entangled, and sifted 

 as it were, by the whalebone or baleen ; which, from its 

 compact arrangement, and the thick internal covering 

 of hair, does not permit a single particle of the size of 

 the smallest grain to escape. 



The whales have no voice, but in the act of respira- 

 tion, or blowing, as the seamen term it, they make a 

 very loud noise, which may be heard for several miles 

 round, and is oftentimes, nay generally, a signal to the 

 whalers of this animal being in their vicinity. The 

 watery vapour they discharge is ejected in a somewhat 

 radiated form to the height of some yards, and at a 

 distance it appears like a puff of smoke. When the 

 animal is wounded, it is often stained with blood, and 

 on the approach of death, jets of blood are sometimes 

 discharged from them alone. They blow strongest, 

 densest, and loudest when " running ;" and in a state of 

 alarm, or when they first appear at the surface after 

 having been a long time down. They respire or breathe 

 about four or five times in a minute. 



Being considerably higher than the medium in which 

 it swims, the whale can remain at the surface of the sea, 

 with its " crown," in which the spiracles, or blow-holes, 

 are situated, and a considerable extent of the back, above 

 water, without any effort or motion. However, great 

 exertion is required for its descent. The proportion of 

 the whale appearing above water, either when alive or 

 recently killed, is not, probably, more than the twentieth 

 part of the whole bulk of the animal ; but after death, 

 even within a day when the putrefactive process of de- 

 composition has commenced, the whale swells to an 



