FEEDING 



279 



of disease or decay and are frequently covered with barnacles, which 

 shows that they are not fully employed. 



The anonymous author of the short article on the Cachalot in the French 

 Encyclopaedia (1771) was the first to point out that Sperm Whales also 

 had teeth in their upper jaws. Petrus Camper described them again fifteen 

 years later, and it is, therefore, all the more astonishing that knowledgeable 

 biologists like Abel (1907), Doflein (1910) and other authors as late as 

 1928 should still have stressed the absence of these teeth. True, the upper 

 teeth are rather insignificant and generally hidden in the gum, but their 

 presence has been demonstrated quite clearly. In 1938 Prof. Boschma, 

 the Director of the Leyden Natm^al History Museum, in which the study 

 of Cetaceans has always been pursued very keenly, gave an excellent 

 description of the upper teeth of two Sperm Whales which had stranded 

 near Breskens in 1937. In the bigger of the two animals, he found fifteen 

 small teeth embedded in the gum on either side of the jaw. Their length 

 varied from 2^ to 5^ inches. The first, sixth, twelfth and fifteenth teeth 

 protruded from the gum, but all the others were completely hidden 

 (Fig. 160). 



A proper set of upper teeth in sockets was, however, present in some 



Figure 160. A number of rudimentary 

 teeth from the upper jaw of a 57-foot male 

 Sperm Whale stranded {with a 51-foot 

 congener) near Breskens on 24 February 

 1937- The teeth were largely hidden in 

 the gum. [Boschma, 1938.) 



