332 



The Living Animals of the World 



may in a modified jirocess 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, wliile the toothless whales have as complicated a stomach as the 

 rest. Mr. Beddard, writing on the suliject 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 groujjs, or sub-orders, are essentially different from the teeth 

 of many otlier kinds of mammals. It cannot, perhaps, be insisted that the distinctive terms 

 emploved 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 sjjerm-whale bears teeth that 

 are of any use, though there are smaller and functionless teeth in the gums of the upper. 

 The teetli 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 '"'■k I 



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- 

 bill, the feeding of tlie 

 whalebone-whales is 

 unique. Tliey gulp in 

 the water, full of jjlank- 

 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-jdates ajipear to vary in a degree not yet 

 definitely established ; but there may, in a large whale, be as many as between oOO and 400 

 on either side 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 Eiver-dolphins of the Ganges and Amazons — 

 is unrepresented in the British 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 l^oscombe, 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 Ivudolphi ; 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 



I'ltOlo I,, I A. N. kinlhii,,! ,1 N,.„,<. 



sowerby's beaked whale. 



One of tha rarest of British whales, and very scarce elsewhere. It probably inhabits the open seas. 



