Dark Is Before the Daivn 365 



six feet eight inches in length for the male or six feet two inches for 

 the female, or to weigh more than eighty-eight and seventy pounds 

 respectively. It is pale brown, has a pronounced triangular dorsal fin, 

 a rather speedy-type tail, and broad flippers which it can fold up 

 like a fan. It has a distinct neck and a rounded head from the front 

 of which protrudes the most exaggerated beak of any living whale. 

 This is narrow, tubular, and blunt-ended, and no fewer than two 

 hundred small sharp teeth, all alike, are arranged along each side of 

 its upper and lower jaws, averaging about fifty a side. This strange 

 animal goes about in small family parties, wandering out into the sea 

 and up and down the southeast coast of South America, entering all 

 the rivers, great and small, but always keeping to the north in the 

 southern winter or going far inland away from the antarctic cold at 

 that season. 



The boutu of the Amazon is quite a different beast. It averages 

 between six and seven feet in total length, and also has a long, slender 

 beak, but one shaped more like that of a stork. Its tail is more sub- 

 dued in outline, and instead of a dorsal fin it has an extraordinary, 

 elongated ridge stretching from the neck to the tail base and rising 

 gently to a rather abrupt peak about amidships. The flippers are even 

 larger than those of its La Plata cousin and it uses them to cross mud- 

 banks, like a sea lion galumphing over a beach, raising its forequarters 

 off the ground when completely out of water. Its eyes are tiny, but 

 its ear openings are rather large, and it has acute aerial as well as sub- 

 aqueous hearing. There are only thirty teeth per side in each jaw, but 

 some of those at the back have dual crowns and sometimes even 

 double roots, which is distinctly reminiscent of the early Squalodonts. 

 In color they run the whole gamut from an over-all baby-pig pink 

 through beige, various smooth browns, grays, and slates to a rather 

 startling indigo. All colors may be seen together when large parties 

 join up in the big rivers. Normally, two of about the same color 

 (and this may be a feature of age) travel together. They extend right 

 up the mighty Amazon even into the tributaries that flow from the 

 eastern escarpment of the Andes, but they also occur in the rivers 

 of the Guianas and in the Orinoco, and have been caught at sea 

 immediately along the coast. Their final oddity is that they can turn 

 their heads around, and have pronounced necks, the skin on the back 

 of which is thrown into wrinkles like that of a walrus. 



