BALAENIDZ. 39 
long baleen. The largest of these animals is the Bowhead, or Arctic 
Right Whale, B. mysticetus, which yields more oil and a better 
quantity of whalebone than any other species. Although huge in 
bulk, its gullet is not over two inches in diameter, and its food consists 
of microscopic organisms, millions of which are swallowed at a time. 
It is emphatically an ice whale, living amid floes and vast fields of 
ice of the Polar regions. Various species of these whales, arranged 
under separate genera, frequent the different seas. 
Fam. |l. Baleenidz. Baleen Whales. 
F. W. True, On the nomenclature of the Whalebone Whales of the 
tenth edition of Linneus, Systema Nature. Proc. U.S. Nat. Mus., 
TS98, p: 617: 
Fig. 10. BALANA GLACIALIS—BALEEN. 
Riverside Nat. History. 
Teeth absent in both jaws, present in foetal life; palate furnished 
with whalebone. Rami of mandible greatly arched outward, meet- 
ing at an angle at apex, there connected by fibrous tissues. Skull 
symmetrical. First pair of ribs alone joined to the sternum; the 
others are fastened to the vertebre by ligaments. Nasals roofing the 
anterior nasal passages. 
