THE FITNESS OF RIGHT WHALES 73 
ment for shunting forward the spout-shaped glottis 
(the entrance to the windpipe) so as to project into 
the posterior opening of the nasal passage at the 
back of the mouth. Thus the Baleen Whale swim- 
ming with its huge mouth yawning, so as to catch 
myriads of small fry, is not itself drowned. It is 
interesting that a very similar adaptation is seen 
when the crocodile is drowning its prey, and when 
the young marsupial in its mother’s pouch is having 
milk injected down its gullet. 
The story goes that a Yankee visitor to the Zoo, 
after a prolonged scrutiny of the giraffe, turned 
away with the remark: “I don’t believe it.” If 
he had been able to give the same attention to his 
own New England Right Whale, he might well have 
said the same. Black in color, a Colossus 54 
feet long, with a head occupying about a fourth of 
the whole, with a neck as short as the giraffe’s is 
long (yet with the same number of vertebrz), 
with about 250 plates of black baleen hanging 
down from the roof of the mouth on each side, 
and sometimes reaching a length of 7 feet—what 
a quaint creature! The plates of whalebone 
illustrate one of Nature’s evolutionary methods, 
making the new out of the old, for they are exag- 
gerations and cornifications of the transverse pala- 
tal ridges to be seen on the roof of the mouth in 
many other mammals. How striking, again, is the 
apparently disturbed topography, the nostrils 
far back on the top of the head, the inconspicuous 
eye away down at the posterior corner of the mouth, 
