10 Gude to Whales, Porporses, and Dolphins. 
and charged with water-vapour. This, condensing in a cold 
atmosphere, forms a column of steam or spray; but when the 
animal commences to “blow” before the nostril has cleared the 
top of the water, some of the latter is often driven upwards with 
the blast. In hunting Whales the harpoon often pierces the 
lungs or air-passages, when fountains of blood are forced high in 
the air through the blow-holes. 
Whales and Dolphins prey upon living animal food ; but the 
Killers alone eat other warm-blooded animals, as Seals, and even 
members of their own kind, large and small. Many feed on fish, 
others on small floating crustaceans, minute molluses, and jelly- 
fish; while the principal food of many is constituted by various 
species of cuttlefishes, especially squid, which abound in some 
seas, where they form almost the entire support of some of the 
largest members of the order, such as the Sperm-Whale. 
In size the members of the order vary immensely, some of the 
smaller Dolphins scarcely exceeding four feet in length, while 
Whales excel in bulk any animal of either present or past times 
of which we have any evidence. 
With a few exceptions, Whales and Dolphins are timid, 
inoffensive creatures, active in their movements, and affectionate 
in disposition towards one another. This is especially the case 
with regard to the conduct of the mother towards her young, of 
which there is usually one, and at most two, at a time. They are 
generally gregarious, swimming in herds, or ‘“ schools,’ sometimes 
amounting to hundreds in number, though some species are met 
with singly or in pairs. 
Like Fishes, many Dolphins and Porpoises, which habitually 
swim near the surface of the water, have their backs dark and 
their under-parts light, thus rendering them as inconspicuous as 
possible, both when seen from above and from below. 
In this place reference may conveniently be made 
to the ear-bones of Cetaceans, of which a series is 
exhibited in one of the table-cases at the north end of the gallery. 
These are not to be confounded with the bones (stapes, incus, 
and malleus) commonly called ear-bones in Man and_ other 
land-Mammals. They veally represent the tympanic and periotic 
of the human skull, the former of which constitutes the 
bony tube of the ear, while the latter encloses the little bones 
of the inner portion of the organ of hearing. In Whales the 
Ear-Bones. 
