44 BRITISH MAMMALS 



FAMILY : BAL&NID&. THE RIGHT WHALE 

 anstralis. THE SOUTHERN RIGHT WHALE 



The hugest of the " Right " whales, commonly known as 

 the Greenland whale (Bal^ena mysticetus]^ now so near extinction, 

 and driven up to the most inaccessible parts of the Arctic Ocean, 

 cannot be classed as a British mammal, because no certain evidence 

 exists of it having been seen in close vicinity to the British 

 Islands, the recorded instances of its presence being more probably 

 referable (it is thought) to the species about to be described, the 

 Southern Right Whale. But in the Pliocene deposits of Eastern 

 England fossil remains are found (the ear bones) which would 

 almost seem to indicate that the Greenland whale was found at 

 one time in British waters. 



The southern right whale does not grow to quite the same 

 enormous size as the Greenland whale (which may be as much as 

 60 ft. long), and its head is also proportionately smaller. In the 

 Greenland whale the shape and the size of the head are carried to 

 the utmost degree of exaggeration. The southern right whale 

 also is' (or was, for it may be quite extinct by now) almost black 

 in colour, and not marked with white in various parts of the 

 body, as often occurs to the Greenland whale. Neither the 

 southern nor the Greenland right whales have any dorsal fin, or 

 any longitudinal furrows on the skin of the throat and chest. Its 

 average length may not exceed 50 ft. The baleen, or whale- 

 bone, is shorter, and perhaps lighter in colour than in the case of 

 the Greenland whale. This baleen is nothing but an extravagant 

 development of the lamellae or furrows of the palate (epithelium). 

 These thin plates or blades of horny matter are broadest at their 

 base where they are attached to the gum, and narrowest at their 

 terminations. In their lowest portions they are frayed into a 

 number of threads, and these threads serve as a fine sieve for the 

 purpose of straining from the water the minute organisms on 

 which the right whales feed. The plates of baleen may be as 

 many as 380 in number. In the right whales they are generally 

 t>lack in colour, and gray or grayish-yellow in the other members 



