FisiiKs. 475 



taiiity : there are better methods for extracting oil, and jiroper 

 machines for cutting the animal up, tlian were used in the early 

 fisheries. But as an account of this belongs to the history of 

 art, and not of nature, we must be contented with observing, that 

 several parts of this animal, and all but the intestines and the 

 bones, are turned to a very good account; not only the oil, but 

 the greaves from which it is separated. The barbs also were an 

 article of great profit ; but have sunk in their price, since women 

 no longer use them to swell out their petticoats with whale- 

 bone.* The flesh of this animal is also a dainty to some nations, 



* The Grpenland whale affords to us a sublime instance of contrivance, 

 oompeusating' its total want of teeth, in the hundreds of plates of whalebone, 

 which cover the roof of its mouth ; and which, by their growth, iiicreasinfj 

 in length and in breadth, often acquire twelve feet in length, and fifteen 

 inches broad. There have, indeed, been some instances in which whale- 

 bone has attained fifteen feet in length ; since those whales, which afford 

 whalebone of twelve feet, are themselves often more than sixty feet in 

 length. The upper surface of the skull of a whale of this size, measured 

 twenty feet eight inches long; and the creature itself weighed upwards of 

 H hundred tons. The roots of the two sides of the arch of whalebone, in the 

 miiiith of this animal, nearly meet at the top of the roof whence they grow, 

 at the anterior part of the mouth ; but they gradually recede from each 

 other, as they are continued baiUvvards, till they approach th(" throat, when 

 lliey again approximate. This substance, called whalebone, which thus 

 supplies the place of teeth, consists of a peculiar kind of horn. Its plates 

 ditfer in their lingth and strength, in different parts of the mouth, but the 

 outer row of plates are by far the strongest and the longest, especially those 

 which are mid-way between the throat and the snout. As the fibres of every 

 plate are loose and separate at its inferior edge, forming a deep pendent 

 fringe, by the gradual splitting away of its substance in proportion as it is 

 used, the entire vaulted sides of the roof of the mouth, in fact, by these 

 means, is deeply lined with a clothing of thick and coarse hair, whence the 

 ancients gave to this species of whale the name of mysticetus. Beneath this 

 vault of hair, lies the enormous tongue of the whale, and exterior to it, is 

 the immensely high lower lip, which, when the jaws are closed, shuts up 

 over all externally to the very origin of the whalebone above, so as to en. 

 tirely conceal it from view. Hy means also of this formation of the lip, and 

 the circumstance of the upper .jaw shutting into a cartilaginous grove at the 

 eNfremity of the lower one, the most perfect valve is formed, which any 

 pressure from without, only tends to render more secure from (he ingress 

 of the water. The fringe produced by the whalebone (as it is constinitly and 

 gradually extending itself in length, by the growth of the whalebone behnid 

 it, in proportion as it is worn away), is thus always in a proper state of 

 ndaptaticm to the marvellous economy of the creature ; for the must curious 

 part of this beautiful mechanism is the net or sieve which it thus forms ; an 

 instrument which has been granted to this largest of i-reatures, for the pur- 

 pose of Btraininff or separating its minute prey from the water nerrssarlly 



