PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 239 



class Mammalia. This substance is found in the mouths of the 

 true whales; whence it has been most improperly called whale- 

 bone. It consists of a number of horny laminae, implanted in 

 the palate, and descending vertically into the mouth. The supe- 

 rior maxillary and palatal bones form, on their lower part, two 

 inclined surfaces, giving to the palate an appearance resembling 

 the roof of a house reversed. These surfaces are rather con- 

 cave, and upon them are placed the laminae of whalebone, in 

 parallel lines, and their direction is transverse to the axis of the 

 body. They sometimes amount to eight or nine hundred on 

 each side of the jaw, and some of them in the Greenland w^hales, 

 are more than ten feet in length. They are connected to the 

 bones by the intervention of a white ligamentous substance, 

 which changes, by imperceptible degrees, into true whalebone. 

 Each lamina, interiorly, presents a bed of horny fibres, enclosed 

 on each side within a layer of whalebone, which is thinner, more 

 firm, and less apparently fibrous than the body of the lamina. 

 The fibres issue from between these layers, and form a fringe- 

 work, which hangs free from the inferior border of the whalebone; 

 so that this fringe garnishes all that part of the palate above the 

 tongue. The fibres are not equal in all the whale species ; the 

 rorqual having them larger than the Greenland whale, which has 

 however by far the longest laminae. 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. 



March 12th. — Rev. J. Webb's Lecture on Capital 

 Punishments. 



In the commencement of the lecture, a brief survey was« taken of 

 the rise and progress of Capital Punishments ; nations in their 

 earlier stages of existence were stated to have used them with 

 frequency, and often attended with circumstances of aggravated 

 cruelty. Their abolition at Rome by the Porcian law, and 

 resumption under the emperors, was then adverted to : after which 

 the lecturer noticed the influence which the formation, and the 

 decay of feudal institutions throughout the kingdom of Europe, 

 exercised upon their penal codes : he then traced their history 

 down to the close of the last century, at which time he stated 

 ** that there were in each of the penal codes of England and 

 France about 150 offences punishable with death." He then 

 proceeded to enquire whether the right to inflict the punishment 

 of death existed; and endeavoured to prove that it did not; — 

 that it was not Jovnded on the principal of abstract moral justice. 

 The lecturer argued that it was impossible for man in his 

 judicial capacity to contemplate offences in relation to it — but 

 rather that he should "regard them as crimes, not as sins; a$ 



