AI4 THE WORLD OF THE SEA. 
to stand without stooping inside the mouth of a whale seventy- 
eight feet long, caught in the Bay of the Somme. The upper jaw 
has about 700 vertical plates of a horny substance, edged with a 
pendant fringe on each side of the mouth. These plates, known 
in science by the name of dards, and in commerce by that of zwhade- 
bone, are often twelve or fifteen feet in length. The tongue is mon- 
strous ; it is said to be often twenty-four feet long, and twelve wide, 
and the oil expressed from it fills five or six hogsheads. Properly 
speaking, it is not a tongue, but a thick, soft, heavy mattress, 
consisting entirely of fat, spread out on the lower jaw. It is 
fastened down throughout the whole length, and is consequently 
immovable. We can hardly imagine a tongue that cannot be 
put out of the mouth. 
The whale feeds upon medusa, mollusks, and other small 
marine animals, which are washed into his mouth by the water. 
The monster swims on the surface of the sea, with his mouth 
open; he has only to close the huge portals, and he imprisons a 
whole population; the water, strained through the sieve or net 
formed by the barbs, which are like a forest of close fibres, leaves 
behind it all the small fish and other animals which form his prey. 
For each meal thousands of victims are required. It is a law of 
Nature that large animals feed upon small ones, and sometimes the 
very large consume the minute,.as in the case we are considering, 
for the animalculee swallowed by this giant of the deep are only 
a few inches long, but the number consumed compensates for their 
diminutive size. It has been shown that these tiny inhabitants of 
the waters multiply by millions ; and if their destruction were not 
so provided for as to counteract their fecundity, their numbers 
would in a few generations absolutely crowd the ocean. It is a 
strange sight to see this huge leviathan pursue pitiful creatures 
made of gelatinous matter, without shape, without consistency, and 
so small as to be barely discernible. It is supposed, however, that 
from time to time the whale does eat fish, and even tolerably large 
fish ; a tunny was once found whole in a whale’s stomach. 
Though whales live like fishes yet they breathe like quadrupeds. 
It is said that their breath is tainted with an insupportable odour, 
putrid, and almost cadaverous, and that their snoring can be heard 
from afar! Their circulation is on no less gigantic a scale. In the 
a 
