66 ESCHRICHT AND REINHARDT 



posterior part of its anterior half. Its upper free surface is slightly arched behind, but becomes 

 flattened in the fore part, and even a little hollow towards the point. This superior surface 

 meets the lateral surfaces in an edge which becomes sharper and more distinct towards the 

 point ; the lateral surfaces are slightly furrowed longitudinally. The tongue was of a very light 

 liver colour, and at the bottom of the furrows of the lateral surfaces it became almost white. 

 According to the statement of Major Fasting, its colour was exactly the same in the fresh-killed 

 animal before it was placed in salt. The epidermis had come off almost everywhere, and in those 

 very few and small spots where it still remained it could be very easily pulled off. When this 

 was done it appeared very distinctly that the .skin beneath is provided with a multitude of short 

 extremely fine papillæ, which, as on the entire surface of the body, are hidden beneath the smooth 

 surface of the horny layer of the epidermis. 



The roof of the mouth or the palate is formed, as in whalebone whales in general, by 

 two sides converging obliquely downwards and meeting in a sharp edge, only that these sides in 

 (lonformity with the peculiar form of the upper jaw are far more narrow than in the fin-whales 

 and humpbacks, and that they, except in the posterior part towards the pharynx, descend 

 far more abruptly towards the mesial hne of the palate, so that the edge in which they 

 meet is situated very much lower than the upper lip, which certainly is in itself of very small 

 dimensions. 



What particularly attracts our attention in any description of the cavity of the mouth of a 

 whalebone whale, must, of course, be the whalebone system so characteristic of this family. 

 Everybody knows that this consists of several hundred horny blades placed transversely on either 

 side, hanging down from the converging sides of the palate, so that only the mesial line of the 

 palatal surface is left bare. As all horny parts are produced in the form of a sheath on the skin 

 beneath, which serves them as a germ or pulp, the form and position of the whalebone-blades 

 alone will show that they are produced on as many transverse folds of the skin of the palate, and 

 we may get an almost exact idea of the outlines of the soft pulps of the whalebone by examining 

 the horny whalebone-blade. We say " almost exact," for the horny part, produced in the form of a 

 sheath round its pulp, may, as it is very well known, grow more or less freely in an outward 

 direction without a corresponding increase of the pulp. Each blade of whalebone (all those 

 pieces included into which it may appear to be divided or split, not only the large external plate 

 or the baleen, properly so called, but also all its internal narrow plates or subsidiary plates as we 

 call them) has the shape of a lengthened triangle, the shortest side of which is fixed to the palate, 

 while the remaining two sides are free ; one of these is turned outwards and is smooth, the other 

 is turned inwards and downwards, and fringed by more or less flexible hairs or bristles. The 

 consequence of this must be that the corresponding pulp of a whalebone-blade (that of the 

 external baleen and all its subsidiary laminæ taken together) must also be triangular and 

 more especially have its superior edge fixed, while its exterior is free and smooth, and the interior 

 one is turned downwards and provided with the hair pulps corresponding to the hairs ; but it 

 cannot be determined beforehand how far this cutaneous pulp enters into the horny blade, nor 

 how far the hair-pulps or the filaments on the interior and inferior edge of its blade-like part enter 

 into the hairs or bristles. 



Several naturahsts have abeady had opportunities of observing the baleen-matrix of stranded 

 whales in its whole extent on the sides of the palate, the horny parts having fallen off in conse- 

 quence of commencing decomposition. Such observations have been made by Rosenthal on a 



