STRANDED AT LONGNIDDRY. 217 



vibriones. It was clear, therefore, that the pink tint of the baleen in' the Pike 

 whale was due to the blood"" situated in the tubes which traversed its substance 

 in the vertical direction. 



I am not aware that any explanation has previously been given of the cause 

 of the pink colour of the baleen in the lesser Pike whale. Indeed many 

 writers seem to have paid but scanty attention in their descriptions to the 

 existence of this tint. 



Both in the Longniddry and the Pike whales the surface of the palate, from 

 which the baleen grew, possessed numerous transversely elongated folds of the 

 palatal mucous membrane (the pulp-blades of Eschricht and Reinhardt), 

 corresponding in their arrangement and transverse diameter to the different 

 sizes of the baleen plates in the various transverse rows, and fitting into their 

 cleft basal edges (fig. 26). The largest of these folds in the former animal pro- 

 jected as much as r^ths of an inch from the general palatal surface. The free 

 lower edge of each fold was fringed with multitudes of well-marked elongated 

 filiform papillae, which fitted into and indeed filled up the tubes in the 

 plates and setae already described. These may be called the tubular papillae. 

 If great care was taken in stripping off the plates, the papillae could be drawn 

 out of the tubes, and in fig. 26 a view of a number of these structures from 

 the interior of the tubes of a plate of the Longniddry whale is given. The 

 tubular papillae varied in length in this preparation, some being 3 inches long, 

 whilst others were considerably shorter ; but none of these papillae represented 

 the full length of the tubes they originally occupied, as they always broke short 

 in the act of removal. They varied also in thickness, in correspondence with 

 differences in the bore of the tubes ; and they were thicker at their attached 

 than free extremities. 



Folds and papillae of this character have been described with more or less ful- 

 ness of detail by Hunter, Ravin,! Rosenthal,! Knox,§ Owen,j| Eschricht and 

 Reinhardt,^ Flower,** and MALM,tt in connection with the baleen in the 

 different whales which they have examined ; and in the Anatomical Museum of 

 the University of Edinburgh are several specimens, prepared, I believe, in the 

 year 1843, by the late Professor Goodsir, which furnish very illustrative views 

 of the folds and larger papillae of the baleen plates. They have been regarded 

 as the nidus, matrices or pulps, from, and in connection with, which the specially 



* As confirmatory evidence of this fluid being blood, I may state that I requested my friend, Dr 

 Arthur Gamgee, to apply the cbemical test for blood. He found that the fluid gave with guaiacum 

 and peroxyde of hydrogen the characteristic greenish-blue colour of haemoglobin. 

 "f" Ann. des Sc. Naturelles, 2 Ser. t. v. 



X Abhand. der Akad. der Wissensch. zu Berlin, 1829, p. 127. § Catalogue, op. cit. 



|| Odontography, p. 312. 1F Ray Society's Translation, op. cit. 



** Proc. Zool. Soc, 1865, Nov. 28. 

 tt Monographie Illustree du Baleinoptere, Stockholm, 1867. 



VOL. XXVI. PART I. 3 L 



