CLASS MAMMALS: ORDER CETACEA. 85 



Fig. 136. 



Fig. 137. 



Montidon monocZros, Narwhal 



Balsenidae. The Greenland Whale, being the one most 

 sought by whalemen, is known as the Eight Whale. Its 

 huge mouth is cleft to the depth of twenty feet, with a 

 breadth of six or eight.* The upper jaw, instead of 

 teeth, has slabs of whalebone (baleen) hanging freely, about 

 an inch apart. These are often 

 1800 in number and the longest 

 ten feet in length; the outer edges 

 being smooth and solid, the inner 

 fringed with fibres. In feeding, 

 the whale moves rapidly forward 

 near the surface of the water, not 

 with open mouth, but with its 

 lower lip dropped over, leaving the baleen exposed. The 

 water rushes in, carrying myriads of minute animals. The 

 great tongue being then raised and the lower lip lifted, the 

 water is strained out through the baleen, and discharged at 

 the sides of the mouth in torrents,f while the food remains, 

 to be swallowed at leisure. 



* Curiously, the throat opening out of this enormous cavity will hardly admit the 

 entrance of the two fingers. As the whale has no teeth, it can therefore eat only very 

 small animals. 



t Close observers maintain that the whale in breathing never spouts water from 

 the nostrils as the ordinary pictures represent. When it rises to the surface, a foot 

 or more of water over the head is blown away by the breath escaping from the lungs. 

 This is followed by the vast body of air expelled, surcharged with moisture hot from 



