262 



NATURAL HISTORY. 



scramble. The Narwhal possesses only two teeth : the greatly-developed or left canine, and within 

 the jaw on the right side the rudiment of a similar tooth which seldom is protruded ; although in certain 

 rare cases, instead of cfne, the two tusks are developed. Along the jaw or gum there is a scolloped 

 appearance foreshadowing as it were teeth. In the palace of Rosenberg, Dr. R. Brown states, there 

 is a throne manufactured of Narwhal ivory, and Captain Scoresby had a bedstead made of the same sub- 

 stance. A Greenlander's dainty is Narwhal skin boiled to a jelly, this dish of mattak being a bonne bouc/ie 

 offered to strangers. The oil is very superior, the flesh extremely palatable. Though so peculiar in 

 appearance and dentition, this veritable unicorn in all other structural peculiarities is truly a Dolphin. 



MEDIAN SECTION SHOWING INSIDE LEFT HALF OF SKULL OF WHALEBONE WHALE, 



WITH HALEEN IN POSITION. (Modified after Eschricht.) 



Sr, brain cavity ; J, J*, upper and lower jaw-bones, bo, bo, being roughened parts of bone sawn through ; 

 arrows indicate narlal passages, which open at s, spout-hole ; w, whalebone ; t, tongue in dotted outline; n, 

 nerve aperture lower jaw. 



THE WHALEBONE WHALES (MYSTICETE). 



These are distinguished from the Toothed Whales by their great upper jaws being provided 

 with baleen plates instead of teeth ; in early life, however, rudimentary teeth occasionally are 



present, but these never 

 project beyond the gums. 

 Their skulls are symme- 

 trical and not distorted as 

 in the Denticete. The 

 organ of smell is distinctly 

 developed, and there is a 

 double aperture to the 

 blowhole. The separate 

 bones in the lower jaw 

 arch widely outwards. The 

 upper jaws are relatively 

 narrow and project forward 

 at the same time with a 

 great fore and aft arch, but 

 are encompassed by the 

 lower jaw arches. The 

 head is proportionally of 

 immense size, and admits 

 of an extraordinarily capacious mouth. The palate is but a narrow median line, and the Imge mouth 

 little else than an enormous dome of whalebone plates whose inner lower margins are frayed. Thus 

 while the whalebone is longer than the depth of the closed mouth, it nevertheless is accommodated by 

 being tucked in below at its flexible extremities. A great broad massive tongue fills the interspace 

 between the lower jaws. From this peculiar mouth-formation, the bony area of and around the 

 brain-pan is relatively small. 



Most people have seen a large plate of whalebone, dark-tinted or occasionally lighter, and one 

 extremity ending in a fringe of bristle-like hairs. The whalebone blade of dense horny-like material 

 is in the early stage composed of a brush of hair-like bodies, which, lengthening, solidify and assume 

 the hard horny appearance afterwards known in the blade. The gum of the upper jaws has a series 

 of these plates, the one in front of the other, which elongate as growth proceeds, but leave the free 

 extremity with a fringe of separate hairs. Again, the blade towards the gum is embedded in a fleshy 

 substance similar to the roots of our finger-nails. It grows continuously from the roots, like the 

 latter, and in many respects corresponds, save that the free end is always fringed. Baleen, therefore, 

 though varying from a few inches to a number of feet long, in fact approximates to a series of so to 

 say mouth nail-plates, which laminse have a somewhat transverse position to the cavity of the mouth, 

 and thus their inner split edges and lower free ends cause the mouth to appear as a great hairy 

 archway, shallower in front and deeper behind. The animal in opening its mouth gulps a quantity 

 of water containing its minute marine food, and then closing the mouth the liquid escapes and the 

 small mollusca, &c., are entangled in the hairy meshes. Some of the "Whalebone Whales are dis- 

 tinguished as smooth- skinned and as wanting dorsal fins the family Balaenidse, or Right Whales. 



