366 FOLLOW THE WHALE 



The Chinese lake platanistid is an even more remarkable animal. 

 It is found only in one lake, Tung Ting, where it concentrates in 

 considerable numbers in the winter when the water is low, but it 

 goes up little streams only a few feet wide to breed in the spring. 

 It is about seven feet long, weighs up to three hundred pounds, and 

 is bluish gray above and pure white below. It also has a beak, over a 

 foot long with an average of thirty-five teeth per side in both upper 

 and lower jaws. This beak is curved upwards, but not to the same 

 extent as the extinct Acrodelphid, Argyrocetus, of Patagonia. 



With the living evidence of these strange little whales before us — 

 animals that have mouthfuls of teeth, some of them even showing 

 signs of differentiation, that can move their heads about and even 

 crawl out on to mudbanks, and that have skeletons more Hke normal 

 land mammals than any other whales — it is permissible to suggest 

 that the "First Ancestors" lived along the borders of great tropical 

 rivers. The present-day platanistids may be only the remnants of 

 oceanic creatures who retreated into these rivers for protection 

 but, in view of all their primitive characteristics and their way 

 of life, it is perhaps reasonable to suppose that they have been living 

 there ever since the beginning. Behind them, historically, stands a 

 complete geological void, as we have seen, but in behavior, at least, 

 they certainly fill one of the blanks between the earliest marine 

 whales and their 5^rc>-like "First Ancestors." 



There is an immensity of research still to be done, not only on the 

 little platanistids, but on all whales, and if only the time is vouch- 

 safed to modern educated man, this may in due course be prose- 

 cuted. To approach the whale is not easy; even to see him is some- 

 times almost impossible. There may be a thousand platanistids within 

 two miles of your launch in almost any tropical river, but you will 

 never even know that they are there. A little puffing whistle is the 

 only indication they may give of their presence, and this, as in the 

 case of the boutu, is usually so gentle that it is altogether blanketed 

 by the whirring, buzzing, fizzing, chirruping, and croaking of the 

 myriad insects and frogs, not to mention the roaring of howler 

 monkeys and greater creatures, the thunder of the equatorial rains, 

 and the rushing of the wind as it breaks in waves over the massed 

 foliage. What new types of old animals remain to be found in the 

 waters of tropical rivers simply cannot be conceived. 



