"DIBTT WORK FOR CLEAN MONET^ 53 



better simile I must call fine short fur, although unlike 

 fur it had no roots or apparently any hold upon the 

 blubber Neither was it attached to the skin which 

 covered it ; in fact, it seemed merely a sort of packing 

 between the skin and the surface of the thick layer of 

 solid fat which covered the whole area of the whale's 

 body. The other matter which impressed me was the 

 peculiarity of the teeth. For up till that time I had 

 held, in common with most seamen, and landsmen, too, 

 for that matter, the prevailing idea that a " whale " 

 lived by " suction " (although I did not at all know 

 what that meant), and that it was impossible for him 

 to swallow a herring. Yet here was a mouth manifestly 

 intended for greater things in the way of gastronomy 

 than herrings; nor did it require more than the most 

 casual glances to satisfy one of so obvious a fact. 

 Then the teeth were heroic in size, protruding some 

 four or five inches from the gum, and solidly set more 

 than that into its firm and compact substance. They 

 were certainly not intended for mastication, being, where 

 thickest, three inches apart, «,nd tapering to a short 

 point, curving slightly backwards. In this specimen, 

 a female, and therefore small as I have said, there were 

 twenty of them on each side, the last three or four near 

 the gullet being barely visible above the gum. 



Another most convincing reason why no mastication 

 could have been possible was that there were no teeth 

 visible in the upper jaw. Opposed to each of the teeth 

 was a socket where a tooth should apparently have been, 

 and this was conclusive evidence of the soft and yielding 

 nature of the great creature's food. But there were 

 signs that at some period of the development of the 

 whale it had possessed a double row of teeth, because 



