WHALES AND MERMAIDS 317 



there are the usual seven hones in it, though they all 

 become united into one mass, or all of them save the 

 seventh. The surface of the skin is smooth and glisten- 

 ing, and quite devoid of hair, but the body is kept warm 

 by means of a thick layer of fat — the so-called " blubber " 

 — which lies immediately beneath the skin. Within the 

 enormous mouth there is, on either side, a series of long, 

 flattened, horny plates (the whalebone), which grow on, 

 and hang down from, the roof of the mouth. They thus 

 form two longitudinal series, each plate of which is 

 placed transversely to the long axis of the whale's body, 

 and all are very close together. The outer edges of the 

 plates are solid and nearly straight, but their inner edges 

 incline outward, each plate becoming narrower as it 

 extends downward. These oblique inner edges are also 

 furnished with numerous coarse, hair-like processes, con- 

 sisting of some of the constituent fibres of the horny 

 plates, which as it were fray out, and the mouth is thus 

 lined, except below, by a network of countless fibres 

 projecting from the inner edges of the two series of 

 plates. This network acts as a sort of sieve. When the 

 whale feeds, it takes into its mouth a great gulp of water, 

 which it drives out again with its tongue through the 

 intervals of the horny plates of baleen, the fluid thus 

 traversing the sieve of horny fibres which retains the 

 small creatures — shrimp-like creatures and molluscs — 

 on which these marine monsters subsist. Water in the 

 mouth is no impediment to the whale's breathing, as the 

 upper part of its windpipe (the larynx) passes up into 

 and is enclosed by the back part of the nostrils, and thus 

 no water can pass into the windpipe from the mouth. 

 The longest of the baleen plates attains a length of ten 

 or twelve feet, and there are some three hundred and 

 eighty on either side, the series consisting, of course. 



