CETACEA, 213 
transverse laminz, called whalebone, formed of a kind of fibrous 
horn, fringed at the edges, which serve to retain the little animals 
on which these enormous Cetacea feed. Their lower jaw, supported 
by two osseous branches arched externally and towards the summit, 
and completely unarmed, lodges a very thick and fleshy tongue, and 
when the mouth is closed, envelopes the internal part of the upper 
jaw, and the whalebone with which it is invested. These organs do 
not allow whales to feed on such large animals as their size might 
induce us to imagine. They live on fish, but principally on Worms, 
Mollusca, and Zoophytes, selecting, it is said, the very smallest, 
which become entangled in the filaments of the whalebone. Their 
nostrils, better organised for the sense of smell than those of the 
Dolphins, are furnished with some ethmoidal plates, and appear to 
receive some small filaments from the olfactory nerve. Their cecum 
is short. 
Bal. mysticetus,(1) L.; Lacep. Cet. pl. 2and 3, under the name 
of Nord-Caper, and Scoresby, Arct. Reg. II, pl. 12. (The Com- 
mon Whale.)(2) It has long been considered the largest of all 
animals ; but from the late observations of captain Scoresby, it 
appears that it scarcely ever exceeds seventy feet, a length fre- 
quently surpassed by the wrinkle-bellied whales. It has no dor- 
sal fin. To procure its fat or blubber, which is sometimes seve- 
ral feet in thickness, and contains immense quantities of oil, 
whole fleets are annually equipped. Formerly sufficiently bold 
to venture into our seas, it has gradually retired to the extreme 
North, where the number is daily diminishing. Besides oil, 
it produces black and flexible whalebone, eight or ten feet in 
- length, each individual having from eight to nine hundred strips 
on each side of the palate. One hundred and twenty tuns of oil 
are obtained from a single whale. Shell-fish attach themselves 
to its skin, and multiply there as on a rock, and some of the 
Balanus family even penetrate into it. It is asserted that these 
(1) The o2zaave of Aristotle and lian, which was an enemy of the Dolphin, 
appears to have been a large cetaceous animal armed with teeth; the only true 
Whale known to Aristotle was his mysticetus, which had, says he, sete in the 
mouth in place of teeth ; most probably the Whale, with the wrinkled throat, of the. 
Mediterranean. It is thought, however, that Juvenal alludes to the common 
Whale in the following line, 
** Quanto delphinis balzna britannica major;” 
but the Latins applied the term Balena, in a general way, to all the great Cetacea, 
just as the people of the North do that of Whale, or Wall, and its derivatives, a 
remark essentially requisite to those who study their writings. 
(2) The old figure of Martens, recopied Lacép. I, pl. 1, and in all other authors, 
represents the head too long. 
