THE WHALES. 41 



caught the food which is necessary to support life, and 

 if that trap were smaller the whale could not procure 

 sufficient food to maintain itself. 



From the very nature of their food, it is evident 

 that they cannot chase it as do those animals which 

 hunt their prey either by the eye or the nostril. The 

 latter sense would be, as we have seen, absolutely use- 

 less in an animal that lives in the sea and procures all 

 its living from submarine creatures. The former sense 

 would be equally useless, as, in the first place, scarcely 

 any light can penetrate to the depths into which the 

 whale descends ; and, in the next place, the animal 

 would be in a very bad way if the Greenland Whale had 

 to chase the tiny molluscs, or the Spermaceti Whale 

 the cuttles, as swallows chase flies. 



In point of fact, even if there were sufficient light 

 to enable the whale to see its prey, the eyes of the 

 animal are so situated that they are unable to see any 

 object directly in its front, so that they are utterly use- 

 less in the chase of prey. Indeed, as we have already 

 seen, a whale is quite as able to procure its food when 

 blind, as if it possessed its full visual powers. The 

 whalers are perfectly aware of this fact, and always try 

 to approach a whale either directly in front or in rear, 

 knowing that the animal is equally unable to see in 

 either direction, although it has a wide range of vision 

 on either side. 



Before we leave the whales proper, there is just one 

 point to be noticed as a distinction between the Sper- 

 maceti Whale and its Greenland relative. Both, as we 

 have seen, are constructed in much the same way, the 

 whalebone of one being, in fact, only a modification of 



