vii. THE MERMAID. 103 



tures the lungs lie in the front part of the body in the 

 chest, and the partition between the lungs and the other 

 organs is placed in such a way as to separate the lungs in 

 front from the other organs behind. These creatures there- 

 fore tend to float with the forepart of the body upwards 

 and the hinder parts sunk more deeply in the water. But 

 in the whales and sirens the partition runs backwards and 

 upwards in such a way as to separate the lungs above from 

 the other organs below, and thus to enable the creatures to 

 maintain a horizontal position. 



I will not trouble you with any description of the skull 

 of the manatee, which is very different from that of the 

 whale, the bones being also very hard and dense, whereas 

 those of the whale, except the ear-bones, are very light 

 and porous ; nor of its brain, which is small and smooth, 

 whereas that of the whale has a great number of folds or 

 convolutions, generally a sign of intelligence. But I 

 must ask you to let me say a word or two about the 

 teeth. 



In the great whale-bone whales there are no teeth, but 

 instead there is a great quantity of that curious substance, 

 baleen or whalebone, which frays out at the edges to form 

 a strainer to prevent the small animals on which this huge 

 monster feeds from escaping from its capacious jaws. But 

 even in these creatures when they are very young there 

 are minute rudimentary teeth which never cut the gum. 

 They are quite useless, and are merely indications of a by- 

 gone state of affairs. Just so gentlemen wear on their 

 coats two useless buttons behind. They are useless now, 

 but in days gone by it was the custom to fold the coat- 

 tails back and fasten them to these buttons. The buttons 

 therefore tell us a little bit of the history of dress coats ; 

 and so do these rudimentary teeth tell us a little bit of the 

 history of whales. There are, however, other whales, like 



