228 WHALES, PAST AND PRESENT xv 



that instead of the individuals diminishing in bulk as we 

 approach the times we live in, as with many other groups of 

 animals, the contrary has been the case, no known extinct 

 species of whales equalling in size those that are now to be 

 met with in the ocean. The size of whales, as of all other 

 things whose most striking attribute is magnitude, has been 

 greatly exaggerated ; but when reduced to the limits of sober 

 fact, the Greenland right whale of 50 feet long, the sperm 

 whale of 60, and the great northern rorqual (Balcenoptera 

 sMaldii) of 80, exceed all other organic structures known, 

 past or present. Instead of living in an age of degeneracy of 

 physical growth, we are in an age of giants, but it may be at 

 the end of that age. For countless centuries impulses from 

 within and the forces of circumstances from without have been 

 gradually shaping the whales into their present wonderful 

 form and gigantic size ; but the very perfection of their structure 

 and their magnitude combined, the rich supply of oil protecting 

 their internal parts from cold, the beautiful apparatus of 

 whalebone by which their nutrition is provided for, have 

 been fatal gifts, which, under the sudden revolution produced 

 on the surface of the globe by the development of the wants 

 and arts of civilised man, cannot but lead in a few years to 

 their partial if not complete extinction. 



It does not need much foresight to divine the future 

 history of whales, but let us return to the question with 

 which we started, What was their probable origin ? 



In the first place, the evidence is absolutely conclusive 

 that they were not originally aquatic in habit, but are derived 

 from terrestrial mammals of fairly high organisation, belong- 

 ing to the placental division of the class, animals in which 

 a hairy covering was developed, and with sense organs, 

 especially that of smell, adapted for living on land ; animals, 

 moreover, with four completely -developed pairs of limbs on 

 the type of the higher vertebrata, and not of that of fishes. 

 Although their teeth are now of the simple homodont and 

 monophyodont type, there is much evidence to show that this 

 has taken place by the process of degradation from a more 

 perfect type, even the foetal teeth of whalebone whales 

 showing signs of differentiation into molars and incisors, 



