WHALES 



129 



(Gammarus judex). Of course, a huge creature like the whale cannot 

 consume minute animals like this singly, but in shoals. 



(b) For this reason, the immense toothless moutlt, which could 

 accommodate a small boat, is provided with an apparatus like a sieve or 

 fisherman's net. From each side of the palate is suspended a row of 

 triangular horny plates, like skins hanging from a roof. They are called 

 " baleen," and furnish the " whalebone." (Why is this name a complete 

 misnomer ?) The baleen plates number from 200 to 300, those in the 

 middle being the longest (up to 17 feet). The inner edges of these plates 

 (the hypothenuse of the triangles) are the longest, and frayed out, as it 

 were, into a close fringe of detached fibres of whalebone. As the whale 



'Whale-food" (Clio 

 borealis). (Twice 

 natural size.) 



Diagrammatic Tisansvek.se Section 

 through the hlsad of the greenland 

 Whale, the Mouth being nearly 

 closed. 



0., Upper jaw ; K., nasal septum ; G., palate ; 

 B., baleen ; Z., tongue; U. , mandible. 



shoots through the water with the large mouth widely open, a large 

 quantity of the marine molluscs and crustaceans before mentioned are 

 taken in. When the mouth is now closed, the tongue, which resembles 

 a lump of fat, and is firmly united to the floor of the mouth, is applied 

 to the central part of the palate, which is devoid of baleen, and to the 

 fringes of the baleen plates. In this way the water is forced out of the 

 mouth, while the minute molluscs, crustaceans, etc., which have been 

 caught in the fringes of the baleen are forced into the oesophagus. 

 Anything left behind in this sieve is washed back by the next inflowing 

 current of water. (Compare the beak of the duck and of ornithorhynchus), 

 (c) This adaptation of the mouth as a bucket, as it were, explains 



