ORDER CETACEA. 441 



Cetacea live. The lower jaw sustained by two 

 osseous branches arched externally and towards 

 the summit and totally unarmed, lodges a fleshy 

 tongue, very thick, and envelops, when the mouth is 

 closed, all the internal part of the upper jaw, and 

 the corneous laminae with which it is invested. 



These organs do not permit the Whales to live on 

 animals so large as their enormous size would lead 

 us to believe. They live on small fish, but still 

 more on worms, mollusca, and zoophytes, and it 

 is said that they principally take those very small 

 ones, which become entangled in the filaments of 

 the whalebone : they have a short caecum. 



The Common Whale, (Bah Mysticetus)* Lacep. Cet. I. f. i. 



The largest of known animals; enormous head, 

 obtuse in front ; almost as high as long ; no 

 fin on the back. Its fat yielding an immense 

 quantity of oil is such a desideratum in com- 

 merce, that it is pursued annually by entire 

 fleets, Formerly it used to venture into our 



* The paXama of Aristotle and vElian, which was an enemy of 

 the Dolphins, appears to have been a large cetaceous animal 

 armed with teeth. Aristotle was acquainted with no true balaena 

 but his mysticetus, which was probably the Whale with wrinkled 

 throat in the Mediterranean. It is probable, however, that 

 Juvenal means the Common Whale in this verse : 



Quanto Delphinis balceria Brittanica major ; 

 but the Latins applied the term balcena very vaguely to all the 

 large Cetacea, as the people of the North do still the name of 

 Whale or Wall. 



Vol. IV. 2 G 



