76 (COMMON BRITISH ANIMALS 



'' grampus " is a contraction of " grand poisson/^ 

 and is thus applicable to any whale. The whale- 

 bone of commerce is not the whale's bone. It is 

 derived from the horny projections which hang down 

 like stalactites from the roof of the cavernous jaws 

 (Fig. 21) of certain kinds of whales known as 

 the balsen or whale-bone whales, which form one of 

 the two great groups into which the Cetacea are 

 divided. These whales are provided with balaen or 

 .whalebone and are toothless, while those forming 

 the second group have teeth and no balden and are 

 known as the '' toothed whales." 



Of the whale-bone whales a few are called by the 

 whalers ^' right whales/^ because tliey are the most 

 profitable ones to catch, since they yield the largest 

 amount and the best kind of whalebone, also the 

 greatest quantity of oil. The most profitable of these 

 is the Greenland whale, found only in polar seas. It 

 has been so largely hunted that it has become almost 

 extinct. The black right whales inhabit the tem- 

 perate seas of the northern and southern hemispheres. 

 The blades of whalebone exhibited in the British 

 Museum of Natural History were taken from a large 

 Greenland right whale killed June 21st, 1887. It 

 yielded 26 tons of oil and 26 cwt. of whalebone. In 

 1897 the value of whalebone was £2000 per ton. The 

 number and size of the plates of whalebone vary. As 

 many as 370 have been found in a whale's jaw, and 

 some have been known to attain a length of 13 ft. 

 They are triangular in shape and finely fringed on the 

 inner side. 



When feeding the balsen whales swim slowly with 



