146 THE OCEAN. 



exigency; the mouth has no teeth, but from each 

 upper jaw proceed more than three hundred horny 

 plates, set parallel to each other, and very close; 

 they run perpendicularly downwards, are fringed on 

 the inner edsre with hair, and diminish in size from 

 the central plate to the first and last, the central one 

 being about twelve feet long. The plates are com- 

 monly called whalebone, and their substance is well 

 known to everybody; they form an important object 

 of the fishery. The lower jaw is very deep, like a 

 vast spoon, and receives these depending plates, the 

 use of which is this: when the Whale feeds, he swims 

 rapidly just under or at the surface, with his mouth 

 wide open; the water with all its contents rushes 

 into the immense cavity, and filters oat at the sides 

 between the plates or the whalebone, which are so 

 close, and so finely fringed, that every particle of 

 solid matter is retained. 



Though the Whale, like all other Mammalia, is 

 formed for breathing air alone, and is therefore ne- 

 cessitated to come to the surface of the sea at certain 

 intervals, yet those intervals are occasionally of great 

 length. We well know that we could not intermit 

 the process of breathing for a single minute without 

 great inconvenience, and the lapse of only a few mi- 

 nutes would be followed by insensibility and perhaps 

 death. The Whale, however, can remain an hour 

 under water, or, in an emergency, even nearly two 

 hours, though it ordinarily comes up to breathe at 

 intervals of eight or ten minutes, except when feeding, 

 when it is sometimes a quarter of an hour, or twenty 

 minutes submerged. Now the object of breathing 



