342 THE WHALES, DOLPHINS AND MANATEES 



blade." The gum of the upper jaws has a series of these plates, 

 the one in front of the other, which elongate as growth proceeds, 

 but leave the free extremity with a fringe of separate hairs. Again, 

 the blade towards the gum is embedded in a fleshy substance 

 similar to the roots of our finger-nails. It grows continuously 

 from the roots, like the latter, and in many respects corresponds 

 save that the free end is always fringed. Baleen, therefore, though 

 varying from a few inches to a number of feet long, in fact approx- 

 imates to a series of, so to say, mouth nail-plates, which have a 

 somewhat transverse position in the cavity of the mouth, and thus 

 their inner split edges and lower free ends cause the mouth to appear 

 as a great hairy archway, shallow in front and deeper behind. 



The Greenland or Right Whale (Balcsna mysticetus) attains a 

 length of fifty or sixty rarely seventy feet in length. The females 

 are said to be larger and fatter than the males, and produce one 

 young one rarely two in the spring of the year, which they suckle 

 for a twelvemonth, and exhibit the greatest affection for. The 

 bulky body is largest about the middle, tapering rather suddenly 

 towards the tail, the flukes of which are occasionally over twenty 

 feet from tip to tip. The flipper is short and broadish, while the 

 great head is a third of the entire length of the animal. Gregarious 

 in habit, these whales were at one time seen in herds, but persistent 

 hunting has thinned their numbers, so that now they are generally 

 met with in twos or threes. Among the most remarkable peculiari- 

 ties of this whale are the nature of its food and its mode of feeding. 

 In the high latitudes there float immense quantities of a small 

 soft-bodied mollusc (Clio borealis) and also swarms of minute 

 Crustacea and jelly-fishes of various kinds. The minute invertebrate 

 animals feed upon the even smaller microscopic floating forms of 

 life, and particularly on the unicellular plants called diatoms, 

 and in turn form the food of the whale ; so that in a secondary 

 manner this immense animal is sustained by incredible numbers 

 of these microscopic plants, of which more than a thousand could 

 be placed side by side upon a shilling without crowding ! When 

 the whale opens its mouth to feed, the whalebone springs forwards 

 and downwards so as to fill the mouth entirely. When in the act 

 of shutting it again, the whalebone being pointed slightly towards 

 the throat, the lower jaw catches it and carries it up into the 

 hollow of the mouth. The animal in opening its mouth gulps a 



