76 ESCHRICHT AND REINHARDT 



functionary in the service of the Royal Greenland Commercial Company, succeeded on this 

 occasion in obtaining permission to leave the whalebone sets entire and uninjured for the benefit 

 of science, in consequences of the circumstance, so fortunate for us, that even the longest blades 

 were only three feet long, or shorter than the under-size laminæ current in trade. 



Either of these sides or sets of whalebone forms in its entire mass an exceedingly heavy and 

 flat body, one surface of which is formed by all the exterior smooth edges of the single laminæ 

 covered at their uppermost extremity by the exterior part of the " wreath," the other surface is 

 formed by their interior hairy edges, and is accordingly itself perfectly hairy. In the uppermost 

 broad edge, that by which the set was affixed to the surface of the palate, the topmost open ends 

 of the transversely placed laminæ and the intermediate naked parts of the skin of the palate are 

 to be seen alternating with each other. This edge has, of course, everywhere about the same 

 breadth as the whalebone blades, and is evenly arched in the same degree as the surface of the 

 palate to which it is affixed. In front and behind the set has an obtuse point in which its 

 upper and lower margins may be said to meet. The lower edge, quite hairy by the projecting 

 hairs at the extremity of each single lamina, is, indeed, also generally speaking evenly curved like 

 the upper one, though only when we disregard its foremost and hindmost parts, where it ascends 

 rather suddenly towards the two ends. This characteristic arises from the essential peculiarity 

 of the whalebone-blades of the Greenland whale, that the most anterior and most posterior 

 of them are fully as small and insignificant as those of any of the rorquals, but in their 

 natural order of succession they increase most rapidly in length near the extremities and then 

 again only grow very little longer towards the longest middle laminæ, so little that the lower hairy 

 edge in the greater part of its extent is very slightly curved, and the difference in the length of the 

 laminæ is chiefly shown in the arched form of the upper edge. 



The measurements of these sets of whalebone in the half-grown Greenland whale, after they 

 had become quite dry, gave the following results : 



The length of the whole set in a straight line between its foremost and hindmost points was 

 five feet and a quarter, its height between the two most distant points of its upper and lower edges 

 three feet nine lines; the breadth of the upper edge was four inches and a quarter. 



The number of the laminæ can, as is well known, never be quite accurately ascertained, as 

 there are no distinct limits between the smallest chief-blades and the small irregular subsidiary 

 blades, in which both sets of whalebone terminates before and behind. "We were, as has already 

 been stated, in this young individual, unable to distinguish clearly more than 310 in either set. 

 Measured according to the order of their position the length of these 310 laminæ was found to be 

 as follows : 



