QUADRUPEDS. 205 



tioii of the trachea is not bifurcated. The teats, two in 

 number, are situate on each side of the vulva. 

 Palate covered with baleen. 



The baleen, improperly termed whalebone, is too well 

 known in commerce to require any description. It occurs 

 in the form of sub-triangular plates, with the free edge 

 fringed towards the mouth, the fixed edge attached to the 

 palate, the broad end fixed to the gum, and the apex to 

 the middle of the arch. These plates form a series on 

 each side, and are placed transversely at regular distances. 

 Their use is to strain the water, which the whale takes into 

 its large mouth, and to retain the small animals, on which 

 it subsists. There are no teeth, and the throat is narrow. 

 External opening of the blow-hole double, with an inter- 

 nal septum. 



Back furnished with a protuberance or fin. Piked 

 whales *. 



118. BALENOPTERA. Pectoral skin folded longitudi- 

 nally, and capable of inflation. The species of this genus 

 are very imperfectly determined. The B. musculus, or 



be objected to, on the supposition that whales have not the sense of smell, 

 neither olfactory nerves, nor holes for their passage. This, however, is 

 perhaps not strictly true. On the 26th July 1816, being on board a sloop 

 in the Irish Channel, a large flock of grampuses were sporting immediately 

 around us. The master asserted, from his former experience, that a little 

 bilge-water would put them to flight. The experiment was tried, and the 

 pump had made but a few strokes, when the whole disappeared, I may al- 

 most say, instantaneously, and rose to blow at a considerable distance. In 

 the Dugong, according to Sir E. HOME, " there are orifices in the crebriferm 

 plate of the skull, for the olfactory nerves." Phil, Trans. 1820, p. 153, and 

 HUNTER assigns the sense of smell to the Baleen whales, Phil. Trans. 1778, 

 where some judicious observations on the structure and economy of whales 

 may be found. 



* So named by SIBBALD, on account of the pike or process on the back. 



