58 SEALS AND WHALES OF THE BRLTLSH SEAS. 



that when the mouth is shut, the slender ends of the whalebone curve back- 

 wards towards the throat, the longer ones from the middle of the jaw falling 

 into the hollow formed by the shortness of those behind them; when the 

 animal opens its mouth to feed, the whalebone springs forward and down- 

 wards, thus always by its elasticity, filling up- the space between the upper 

 and lower jaws, whether the mouth be fully or only partially open, and 

 interposing a strainer between the cavity of the mouth and the external water, 

 effectually preventing the food which enters the mouth from passing out with 

 the flow of water which passes through the mouth as the great beast pursues 

 and captures its minute food. 



The Whale whilst feeding swims along with its mouth open, until it has 

 collected a quantity of the small marine animals which form its food ; then, 

 closing its capacious under-jaw, it forces out the water between the plates of 

 baleen, leaving the captive prey stranded on its huge tongue, when it swallows 

 them at leisure. The food of the Greenland Whale consists entirely of small 

 marine animals, particularly a kind of shrimp, found in great abundance in 

 the Arctic seas. This species seldom remains under water longer than from 

 ten to fifteen minutes, returning to the surface to breathe, which, if undisturbed, 

 occupies from two to three minutes. Capt. Gray, however, has known it when 

 harpooned to stay under water fifty minutes. Professor Owen describes the 

 wonderful provision for storing of blood in a vast plexus of blood-vessels 

 found in the Cetacea, at the back of the lungs and between them and the ribs, 

 thus enabling them, although lung-breathing animals, to stay under water for 

 so protracted a period, and states that the peculiar non-valvular structure of 

 the veins of the Cetacea, and the pressure on these reservoirs of blood at the 

 depths to which they retreat when harpooned, explain the profuse and lethal 

 haemorrhage which follows a wound, that in other mammalia would not be 

 fatal* 



* Owen, 'Anat. of Vert., iii., pp. 546 and 553. 



