THE CETACEANS. SY 
whales suffering from extreme alarm and injury, put never 
heard any sound from them beyond that attending an ordinary 
respiration. 
The whalebone whales are either smooth-backs (Balenz), or 
jin-backs (Balenopterz), having a vertical fin rising from the 
lower part of the back. To the former belongs the mighty 
Greenland Whale (Bilena mysticetus), the most bulky ot 
living animals, and of all cetaceans the most useful and im- 
portant to man. Its greatest length, according to Scoresby, is 
from sixty to seventy feet, and round the thickest part of its 
body it measures from thirty to forty feet, but the incessant 
persecutions to which it is subjected scarcely ever allow it to 
attain its full growth. 
The whale being somewhat lighter than the medium in which it 
swims, its weight may be ascertained with tolerable accuracy ; 
and Scoresby tells us that a stout animal of sixty feet weighs 
about seventy tons, allowing thirty to the blubber, eight or ten 
to the bones, and thirty or thirty-two to the carcase. The light- 
ness of the whale, which enables it to keep its crown, in which 
the blow-hole is situated, and a considerable extent of back 
above the water, without any effort or motion, is not only owing 
to its prodigious case of fat, but also to the lightness of its 
bones, most of which are very porous and contain large quantities 
of fine oil; an admirable provision of nature for the wants of a 
creature destined to breathe the atmospheric air, and to skim its 
food from the surface of the waters. 
The unsightly animal shows disproportion in all its organs. 
While the tail fin measures twenty-four feet across, the pectoral 
fins or paddles are no more than six feet long. The monstrous 
head forms about the third of the whole body, and is furnished 
with an equally monstrous mouth, which on opening exhibits a 
cavity about the size of an ordinary ship’s cabin. The leviathans 
of the dry land, the elephant, the rhinoceros, and the hippopo- 
tamus, are provided with tusks and teeth corresponding to their 
size—huge weapons fit for eradicating trees or crushing the bone- 
harnessed crocodile; but the masticatory implements of the giant 
of the seas are scarcely capable of dividing the smallest food. 
Instead of teeth, its enormous upper jaw is beset with about 500 
Jaminze of whalebone, ranged side by side, two-thirds of an inch 
apart, the thickness of blade included, and resembling a frame 
