MAMMALS. 651 



appearance they are really swift of foot, and their pursuit calls for the best 

 efforts of the Eskimo. In appearance, as our figure and their name would 

 suggest, they are much like oxen, but in structure they are more like the 

 sheep and goats, and hence are placed near those animals in any systematic 

 arrangement. 



Whales. 



" The Name of Whale is given to two sorts of Fish ; one is small, fur- 

 nished with Teeth, and his Brain produces that white Substance called 

 Parmacity, so much esteemed by the Ladies. The other is the large Whale, 

 who is destitute of Teeth, but then he is supplied with two large Tushes, 

 a dozen or fifteen Feet long, which rise out of his Jaws, and conveniently 

 to amass together the Weeds, which are generally supposed to be his 

 Food, because Quantities of them have been found in his Stomach. These 

 Tushes, split into small Divisions, are the pretended Whalebone, or that 

 strong and pliant Substance we buy of the Merchant under that Name ; 

 and the whole present usefulness seems almost confined to the Hoop-Petti- 

 coat ; a Mode of Dress altogether senseless and unamiable, but which the 

 Ladies have taken a Resolution to continue, because it gives them less 

 Constraint than the Dress they have now disused." Thus discourseth the 

 ' Count,' concerning whales in that quaint old work, ' Le Spectacle de la 

 Nature,' the design of which was to make scientific facts more palatable 

 by presenting them in conversational form. Yet, while we can readily 

 understand exactly what the count meant, exceptions may be taken to all 

 his statements save, possibly, that relating to the hoop-petticoat, and 

 now even that must not be excepted, for steel has completely replaced the 

 use of whalebone in the manufacture of such articles. 



Whales are the most aberrant of all the mammals. They are very 

 fish-like in shape and appearance, and in the older works on natural his- 

 tory they are invariably spoken of as fishes, and even to-day the term 

 ' whale-fishery ' is in vogue, and will probably only disappear with the 

 pursuit itself. But notwithstanding this external fish-like appearance, a 

 whale is indisputably a mammal. In every feature of structure and 

 development it clearly shows this point. It brings forth its young alive, 

 and nourishes them with milk. The skeleton and viscera too are mamma- 

 lian, and even those features which at first sight seem so fish-like are seen 

 on a closer study to be nothing of the sort. In both fishes and whales the 

 body terminates in a broad caudal fin, but this fin in the fishes is vertical, in 

 the mammals horizontal. In the fishes it is supported by a large number 

 of fin-rays or cartilaginous supports ; in the whale there is absolutely 

 nothing of the kind. Then, too, somewhat similar differences are seen in 



