BALANETE BALANINUS. 



sions than those which are left. They appear, too, to 

 have perished in the order of their locality, commencing 

 with the ichthiosauri of the waters, then marsh animals, 

 and so on for a succession of races, till we come to 

 the elephant, the deer, and the bears of northern 

 forests. But the details, though of the greatest inte- 

 rest, belong not to this place, farther than that we 

 can see in the whales the progress of a change in the 

 ocean similar to those of which we find demonstra- 

 tive evidences on the land. 



The BEAKED, or PIKED WHALE (Balcenoptera 

 ando-roslrata), is one of the smallest, but the most 

 active of the tribe. It is not much sought after as an 

 oil animal ; but the northern people, who also eat the 

 last-mentioned species, set a high value upon its flesh. 

 It gets its trivial name from the form of its snout, 

 which is very much produced and pointed, the lower 

 jaw projecting beyond the upper. The plates of baleen 

 are small, light-coloured, and of a triangular shape ; 

 and the long hairs which fringe them are almost white. 

 These small plates are numerous, amounting to at 

 least three hundred upon each side. There is more 

 motion of the tongue than in most of the other spe- 

 cies ; and it is capable of being elevated or inflated, 

 and also thrust forward as far as the extremity of the 

 upper jaw. This action of the tongue probably as- 

 sists in swallowing the prey, which consists chiefly 

 of fishes, in the capture of which it is by no means 

 inexpert. 



The skin on the under jaw, the throat, and the an- 

 terior part of the body, is formed into transverse folds, 

 which however the animal has the power of effacing, 

 by inflating a sort of paunch. The use of that infla- 

 tion is not well known, any more than that of similar 

 inflations of various reptiles and fishes. It has some- 

 times been conjectured that the inflation is a means 

 of altering the specific gravity, but that is not very 

 probable. It may assist in swallowing, as it extends 

 to the tongue, and indeed the paunch extends to 

 nearly the whole space between the lower jaw-bones. 

 The colour of the upper part is black, and that ol 

 the throat and anterior portion of the under part 

 white, but the furrows of the folds have a reddish 

 tinge. This species is most abundant in the north, 

 but it occasionally ranges southwards, and individuals 

 have been met with in the British seas, though it is 

 not so frequently stranded on our shores as the 

 gibbar. 



BALANETE. The name of a stone which fre- 

 quently occurs in the works of Pliny and the older 

 writers on natural history. They describe two species 

 of it, the one yellow and the other green. It is 

 stated to have been always found in the form of ai 

 acorn, and the probability is, that they mistook i 

 fossil for a common mineral body. Fossils were but 

 little known to t!*e ancient naturalists, and whei 

 they really were found, they generally had ascribed 

 to them some mystical or supernatural powers. The 

 discoveries of a few distinguished men on the Conti- 

 nent, and in our own island, has, however, givei 

 birth to a new science and one that promises to illus- 

 trate every other part of natural history. 



B ALAN ID ;E. The second family of the class 

 Nemalapoda of De Blainv ille's System of Malacology. 

 The animals inhabiting and constructing these very 

 singular mollusks have a sessile body, enclosed in 

 their operculated shell, with numerous branchiae in 

 double rows, unequal, articulated, and ciliated, com- 

 posed each of two cirri, supported by a peduncle and 



exertile ; the mouth with four transverse and dcu- 

 tated jaws, and provided with four hairy palpi-like 

 appendages. 



All the animals of this family live constantly and 

 immediately attached to solid submarine substann , 

 in general at a short distance from the shore. They 

 are found in the seas of all countries, closely placed 

 by the side of each other in numerous groups or 

 clusters, and in most instances so crowded that the 

 symmetrical form of the shell is distorted by being 

 compressed against its immediate neighbour. 



The establishment of the genera, and the order in 

 which these mollusks are now classed, is according 

 o a consideration of the base or support of the oper- 

 culum, and of the number of pieces composing the 

 coronary part ; also, the position of an internal thic 

 eparation, which doubles these shells by descending 

 more or less towards the base ; and finally, by the 

 separation or not of their external surface into two 

 riangular areas, the one concave, the other convex. 



BALANINUS (Germar). The Nut Weevil. A 

 ^enus of coleopterous insects, belonging to the sec- 

 ion Tetramera, division Rkyncophora, and family 

 Curculionidtf. The rostrum is very long, sometimes 

 equalling the entire length of the body, which is of a 

 somewhat triangular form, the thighs are thickened, 

 and sometimes slightly toothed. In the larva state 

 these insects reside in the interior of nuts, acorns, &c., 

 in which eggs are deposited by the female beetle, 

 whilst the fruit is in a young and immature state, a 

 passage being first made by the parent for the intro- 

 duction of the eggs, by drilling through the rind 

 with its rostrum. A single egg of a brown colour is 

 then introduced into each nut, from which, in about a 

 fortnight, a grub is hatched, which by a wise arrange- 

 ment of Providence does not attain its full size until 

 it has consumed the whole of the interior of the nut, 

 the kernel forming the last part which it attacks ; 

 this indeed is suffered to ripen, since were it to have 

 been consumed at the first the grub would be starved. 

 It has been stated (Insect Transformations, p. '242 j, 

 that this would occur because the insect has not th 

 power of perforating another nut when the first is con- 

 sumed : this is,however an erroneous statement,because 

 the powerful jaws which enable the insect to work its 

 way through the hard ripe shell of a nut would surely 

 enable it to find a passage to the interior of a younger 

 one, if by accident it did not find sufficient food in 

 its original habitation. When full grown, that is, 

 when the nut is ripe and falls to the ground in the 

 autumn, the grub bores a hole with its jaws through 



A. a branch of the filbert tree ; , healed wound caused by the 

 introduction of the egg of the nut weevil; 4, extremity of the 

 nut ; c, exit hole of the grub. B, the grub of the nut-weevil, 

 c, the pupa of the same. i>, the p erfect insect, Balunmus nucum. 



C C 2 



