296 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD 
may in a modified process be performed by whales. It is, however, evident that the teeth of 
toothed whales are in no way adapted to the act of mastication, which is inseparable from any 
conception of ruminating, while the toothless whales have as complicated a stomach as the 
rest. Mr. Beddard, writing on the subject in his interesting ‘‘ Book of Whales,” takes the 
more reasonable view that the first chamber of the stomach of whales should be regarded 
rather as a storehouse in which the food is crushed and softened. The teeth of whales, the 
survival of which in the adult animal offers the simplest basis of its classification under one 
or other of the two existing groups, or sub-orders, are essentially different from the teeth 
of many other kinds of mammals. It cannot, perhaps, be insisted that the distinctive terms 
employed for these two categories of whales are wholly satisfactory. For instance, the 
so-called “ toothless ”’ whales have distinct teeth before birth, thus claiming descent from toothed 
kinds. On the other hand, the so-called “ toothed” whales are by no means uniformly equipped 
in this respect, some of the porpoises having as many as twenty-six teeth, distributed over 
both jaws, while the bottlenoses have no more than two, or at most four, and these in 
the lower jaw only. Only the lower jaw, in fact, of the great sperm-whale bears teeth that 
are of any use, though there are smaller and functionless teeth in the gums of the upper. 
The teeth of whales, by the way, are not differentiated like our canines and molars, but are 
all of one character. Although, in ‘ toothless” whales, the fcetal teeth disappear with the 
coming of the baleen, 
; ~~ or whalebone, the latter 
| must not, in either struc- 
ture or uses, be thought 
to take their place. The 
plates of whalebone act 
rather as a hairy strainer, 
Unless we seek a possible 
analogy at the other end 
of the mammalian scale, 
in the Australian duck- 
k _.. bill, the feeding of the 
Rarer oe ete whalebone-whales is 
SOWERBY’S BEAKED WHALE unique. They gulp in 
One of the rarest of whales. It probably inhabits the open seas the water, full of plank- 
ton, swimming open- 
mouthed through the streaks of that substance. Then the huge jaws are closed, and the 
massive tongue is moved slowly, so as to drive the water from the angles of the mouth 
through the straining-plates of baleen, the food remaining stranded on these and on the 
tongue. The size and number of the baleen-plates appear to vary in a degree not yet 
definitely established; but there may, in a large whale, be as many as between 300 and 400 
on either <'de of the cavernous mouth, and they may measure as much as 10 or 12 feet in 
length and 7 or 8 feet in width. 
An enumeration of such whales and porpoises and dolphins as have at one time or other 
been stranded on the shores of the British Isles may serve as an epitome of the whole 
order. Only one interesting group, in fact — the River-dolphins of the Ganges and Amazons — 
is unrepresented in the list. Whales, either exhausted or dead, are periodically thrown 
up on our coasts, even on the less-exposed portions — one of the most recent examples in 
the writer’s memory being that of a large specimen, over 60 feet long, stranded on the sands 
near Boscombe, in Hampshire, and the skeleton of which at present adorns Boscombe Pier. 
It was one of the rorquals, or finbacks, probably of the species called after Rudolphi; but the 
skeleton is imperfect, though its owner, Dr. Spencer Simpson, appears to have preserved some 
details of its earlier appearance. It should be remembered that many of the following can 
only be regarded as “ British” with considerable latitude, the records of their visits being in 
