LITTLE PIKED WHALE. 267 



body muscles are the enormous masses that raise or lower the tail, and serve to propel the 

 animal. Their great proportionate size would be apparent if we were to conceive, for example, 

 of a dog with a tail as thick as its body instead of the usual slender tapering taO. As the old 

 college song put it, "the tail would waggle the dog," and so it actually is with the whale, for 

 the enormous caudal muscles with their powerful sinews, drive the huge body through the water. 

 The propelUng motion is an up-and-down rather than a sidewise movement as in case of fishes. 

 The muscles of the fore Umb are greatly reduced and consist chiefly of shoulder muscles which 

 insert upon the fore arm and humerus and serve to move the paddle or pectoral limb. The 

 shifting of the acromion and the scapular ridge to the front edge of the shoulder blade has 

 decreased the extent of the supraspinaius. But this is in part compensated by the size of the 

 acromion and coracoid process. In the marsupials a shift of the scapular ridge to the anterior 

 edge of the shoulder blade has resulted in a sort of rotation of the supraspinal muscles to the 

 inner side of the scapula, but in Cetacea the subscapularis occupies the whole inner face of that 

 bone. No doubt this arrangement in the whales facilitates the forward motion of the flipper, 

 which, when at rest, is directed posteriorly. The extremely poor development of the hand 

 muscles is a result of their loss of function except as an aid in stiffening the paddle. 



Visceral Anatomy. — In their work on the anatomy of this whale. Carte and Macalister (1SG8) 

 describe the mucous membrane lining the mouth as thrown into longitudinal folds at the inner 

 side of the lower lip, as a sort of continuation of the throat folds, and so adding to the expansibil- 

 ity of the great throat pouch. The upper jaw is shorter than the lower and fits into it when the 

 mouth is closed. In feeding, the throat folds expand to engulf a great quantity of water with 

 the living food, when by closing the mouth and contracting the throat folds, the water is expressed 

 through the plates of baleen, and the food is retained by the thickly matted fibers of their inner 

 edges, whence by the action of the tongue it passes into the gullet. No trace of salivary ducts 

 or functional salivary glands could be ascertained, though the above authors discovered among 

 the muscles of the jaw a small glandular mass which may have represented the vestiges of 

 sahvary glands. Owing to the nature of the whale's food and its manner of feeding, such 

 structures are doubtless not needed. The tongue is fixed to the floor of the mouth and as seen 

 casually in a dead specimen hauled out on shore, is hardly distinct from the general mass of the 

 throat muscles. It shows on close inspection both filiform and fungiform papillae, the latter 

 particularly at the sides. At the back of the mouth a curious hood-like fold of mucous mem- 

 brane is present, the cavity of which is directed backward. During the act of swallowing, this 

 hood completely closes over the opening of the air passage to the lungs, and so effectually 

 excludes water from them and prevents the escape of air as well. The diameter of the gullet 

 in the 14-foot whale dissected by these two anatomists was hardly more than one and a half 

 inches, and its length was some eighteen inches. Its lining is thrown into low ridges running 

 lengthwise which give it some power of distention. Five distinct stomach chambers are 



