Softly Comes the Damn 135 



angular in shape with the hypotenuse facing inward and downward 

 into the mouth, and this edge is frayed out into a fringe of hairs. 

 The short sides of the plates are joined to the roof of the mouth 

 along the curve of the upper jaws in a continuous series an inch or 

 so apart, like the plates of a storage battery. They extend from the 

 point of the upper jaw, where the two sets meet, to the back of the 

 mouth on either side. Baleen is known chemically as keratin, and is 

 thus the same material as our own fingernails. Baleen was used for a 

 variety of things, from the plumes on knights' helmets, for which it 

 was shredded and artificially colored, to the stays in women's cor- 

 sets, hoops in skirts, springs for chairs, bristles for hairbrushes, and 

 even the springs in the first typewriters. Today it still sometimes goes 

 to the textile industry, being shredded and woven into certain fabrics 

 to give them resilience. At one time it had the extraordinary value 

 of $3500 per ton, and that at the rate of exchange prevailing in 1750. 



Baleen whales feed by swimming through the water with their 

 vast mouths open where a certain kind of small, shrimplike creature 

 about an inch and a half long, known as krill (Euphausia), occurs in 

 countless numbers. The water swirls around in the great lower jaw, 

 and the krill become entangled in the hairs fringing the baleen sheets, 

 which form a domed mat all over the roof of the mouth, because, it 

 has been suggested, when the krill are frightened, they tend to surge 

 upwards. When a mass is so entangled, the whale closes his mouth 

 and presses his huge, bulging, flabby tongue upwards. All the krill 

 are jammed against the baleen fringe while the water goes out be- 

 tween them, as in a sieve, and pours along outside the jaws to a spe- 

 cial notch at the hind angle of the lips where it jets out into the sea. 

 The krill are then scooped backwards by the tongue and swallowed. 

 The right whales feed exclusively on krill. 



Black right whales have comparatively small flippers and large 

 tail flukes, but no dorsal fin. They are normally jet black in color, 

 but one in about every five has some white patches, usually below. 

 Their most distinctive feature is an excrescence about two feet in 

 diameter on the tip of the snout. This is called the "bonnet," and 

 consists of horny, disorganized skin in which parasitic worms bore 

 and tunnel, and upon which all manner of barnacles grow and whale 

 lice crawl. Its purpose is not known. When feeding, this whale 

 usually stays below for about fifteen minutes, then surfaces to 



