62 



THE WHALES 



Upward by the force of the escaping breath. When the 

 whale opens its valves, just before it reaches the surface, 

 this from a distance resembles a column or two of water. 

 But the whale can no more take in water at its mouth and 

 spout it through its nostrils than can a man ; and the tales 



in some old books to that effect, 

 which still hold in the popular 

 mind, are merest fancy. 



The whales are of two gen- 

 eral kinds : the toothed forms 

 and the whalebone whales. 

 The former is represented by 

 the sperm whale, in which the 

 teeth are large and confined to 

 the lower jaw, or the dolphins, 

 in which both jaws are armed. 

 In the whalebone whales there 

 are no teeth but a series of 

 elastic plates called baleen, 

 which grow from the long up- 

 per jaw, and hang in rows, 

 three or four hundred in num- 

 ber, frayed and bristling at the 

 lower end (Fig. 43). This 

 whalebone is a strainer and 

 forms a trap for the jellyfishes and other fishes upon 

 which the whales rely. In feeding, the animal opens the 

 mouth, the huge lower lips forming a large cavity with 

 the tongue in the bottom and the baleen at the two sides. 

 Swimming slowly through a mass of jellyfishes, the whale 

 fills its mouth, then closes it, the baleen acting as a sieve 



Fig. 43, — Whalebone. 



