442 CLASS MAMMALIA. 



seas, but it has gradually retired into the depths 

 of the North, where its numbers diminish daily. 

 Beside the oil, it also furnishes the black and 

 flexible whalebone eight or ten feet long. 

 Each individual has eight or nine hundred of 

 these strips on each side of the palate. It is 

 said that this monstrous animal feeds only on 

 the small mollusca which swim in the seas it 

 inhabits. The Whale arrives to eighty or one 

 hundred feet in length, and as many in circum- 

 ference. Its throat is twenty feet wide in the 

 aperture ; the young one is twenty feet long at 

 the moment of its birth. A single individual 

 yields a hundred and twenty tons of oil. Shell 

 animals attach themselves to its skin and multi- 

 ply there as on a rock. Some even of the 

 family of the balanus penetrate into the skin. 

 Its excrements are of a beautiful red which 

 tinges cloth pretty well. 



The Nord-caper, (Bal. Glacialis, Klein) Lacep. pi. it. and in. 



As long but more slender, and with a more 

 pointed muzzle than the Whale. It has much 

 less fat and is more agile and difficult to catch. 

 Accordingly, it is seldom sought after except 

 in the failure of the whale fishery. It is com- 

 mon on the coasts of Norway and near the 

 North Cape whence it derives its name. It 

 devours much fish. 



