WHALES. 225 



filling the greater part of the mouth, and appearing, 

 contrary to the tongues of fishes, to be an organ of 

 taste. It abounds in fat, and sometimes will produce 

 several tons of oil. 



The Greenland whale is, as has been said, wholly 

 destitute of teeth, or indeed of any means of seizing 

 its prey with the mouth, vast though that be. It has 

 jawbones that support the lips, but those bones more 

 nearly resemble ribs than ordinary jawbones ; and they 

 are without those organs of rapid compression which 

 are found in all animals that chew or bite. In feeding, 

 the whale has little motion of the jaws ; and if it were 

 to move these unwieldy instruments every time that it 

 swallows one of the small and soft substances on which 

 it feeds, the labour would be so out of all proportion 

 to the result, that it would be contrary to the universal 

 practice of nature that of accomplishing every end 

 by the simplest possible means. The whale feeds with 

 the mouth open ; and the food is caught within that 

 huge cavity. Along the middle of the upper part of 

 the mouth there is a cartilaginous space, called the gum, 

 from which the palatal bones slope down on both sides, 

 and form a cavity having some similarity to the inside 

 of a boat, of which the gum represents the keel. To 

 both sides of this gum are articulated those horny 

 plates of baleen, commonly called whalebone, and in 

 commerce, absurdly enough, whale fins as if they 

 formed part of the swimming apparatus of the animal. 

 Those plates line the whole palate of the animal, and 

 vary in number and size with its age. In large whales, 

 the number on each side often exceeds a hundred, and 

 the principal ones are more than ten feet long. The 



