4o 4 WHALES AND DOLPHINS 



fat serves the animal for warmth, and in addition renders 

 the huge body exceedingly buoyant ; a dead Right Whale, 

 for example, weighing over two hundred tons, will float; 

 but when the carcase is skinned it sinks. 



The order of the Cetacea is divided into two sub-orders. 

 In the Mystacoceti is the single family Balaenidae. In the 

 members of this family there are two nostrils, or ' blow- 

 holes,' and instead of teeth the mouth is fitted with plates 

 of baleen, popularly and wrongly termed ' whalebone.' 



It may be here noted that baleen is not bone, but is 

 analogous to hair. Dip a tuft of hair in any gelatinous 

 substance, and when dried a transverse section placed 

 under the microscope will well represent a section of 

 baleen (see Fig. D in the illustration). 



In the sub-order Odontoceti, which includes all the re- 

 maining Cetaceans, teeth always appear in one or both 

 jaws, baleen is absent, and there is but one external ' blow- 

 hole.' 



To speak of whale-fishing is really a misnomer, yet there 

 is an intimate industrial and commercial connection 

 between sea fisheries proper and the systematic hunting 

 of the Cetacea and the Pinnipedia, or Seals. Oils, seal- 

 skins, furs, baleen, spermaceti, ambergris, and ivory are 

 no inconsiderable additions to the finny food-harvest of 

 the sea. 



FAMILY 



GREENLAND WHALE (Balcena mysticetus). 

 Coloured Plate XXIX. Fig. 2. 



The Greenland Whale, or ' Right Whale, 1 is a denizen of 

 the Arctic seas. Nowadays specimens exceeding fifty feet in 

 length are rare, but before the creature was so remorselessly 

 hunted it more often attained maturity and a length of 

 seventy or even eighty feet. 



The ' Right Whale' has no teeth, but hanging transversely 

 from the upper jaw are some six hundred plates or strips of 

 baleen, varying from one inch in length at the ends of the 

 mouth to a dozen or even sixteen feet in the centre. These 



