506 MANUAL OF ZOOLOGY. 



The Greenland or " Right " Whale (Balcena mysticetiis) will 

 illustrate almost all the leading points of interest in the family. 

 The Greenland Whale is the animal which is sought after in 

 the whale-fishery of Europe, and hence the name of " Right " 

 Whale often applied to it. It is an inhabitant of the Arctic 

 seas, and reaches a length of from forty to sixty feet. Of this 

 enormous length, nearly one-third is made up of the head, so 

 that the eye looks as if it were placed nearly in the middle of 

 the body. The skin is completely smooth, and is destitute of 

 hairs in the adult. The fore-limbs are converted into " flip- 

 pers " or swimming-paddles, but the main organ of progression 

 is the tail, which often measures from twenty to twenty-five 

 feet in breadth. The mouth is of enormous size, the upper 

 jaw somewhat smaller than the lower, and both completely 

 destitute of teeth. Along the middle of the palate runs a 

 strong keel bordered by two lateral depressions, one on each 

 side. Arranged transversely in these lateral depressions are 

 an enormous number of horny plates, constituting what is 

 known as the " baleen " plates, from which the whalebone of 

 commerce is derived. The arrangement of the plates of baleen 

 is somewhat as follows (fig. 1 94) : Each plate is somewhat trian- 

 gular in shape, the shortest side or base being deeply sunk in 

 the palate. The outer edge of the plate is nearly straight, and is 

 quite unbroken. The inner edge is slightly concave, and is 

 furnished with a close fringe formed of detached fibres of whale- 

 bone. For simplicity's sake each baleen-plate has been re- 

 garded here as a single plate, but in reality each plate is com- 

 posed of several pieces, of which the outermost is by far the 

 largest, whilst the others gradually decrease in size towards the 

 middle line of the palate. The large marginal plates are from 

 eight to ten or fourteen feet in length, and there may be about 

 two hundred on each side of the mouth. 



The object of the whole series of baleen-plates with which 

 the palate is furnished, is as follows : The Whale is a strictly 

 carnivorous or zoophagous animal, but owing to the absence of 

 teeth, and the comparatively small calibre of the oesophagus, 

 it lives upon very diminutive animals. The Whale, in fact, 

 lives mostly upon the shoals of small Pteropodous Molluscs, 

 Ctenophora, and Medusa, which swarm in the Arctic seas. To 

 obtain these, the Whale swims with the mouth opened, and 

 thus fills the mouth with an enormous mass of water. The 

 baleen-plates have the obvious function of a " screening-appa- 

 ratus." The water is strained through the numerous plates of 

 baleen, and all the minute animals which it contains are arrested 

 and collected together by the inner fibrous edges of the baleen- 



