WITH THE WHALERS AT DURBAN. 207 



may be a huge inverted upper lip, but whatever part of the 

 anatomy of these strange mammals they represent, they separate 

 the bases of the " finners " and the " finners " themselves from 

 the palate proper. 



Baleen-plates or " Finners." — As stated above, these appear 

 to me to be quite distinct from the palate, and seem to corre- 

 spond rather to the papillae found on the inner surfaces of the 

 cheeks of many animals, notably the ruminants, than to be pro- 

 cesses from the buccal membrane of the palate, for, if my de- 

 scription of the palate is correct, they are outside the gums and 

 inside the cheeks ; or, if the ridge of mucous membrane is 

 an inverted lip, they are really modified hairs of a veritable 

 moustache on an inverted upper lip. These "finners" hang 

 down inside the cheeks ; they are sharp and smooth on their 

 outer-edges, and the inner-edges are frayed out into coarse brown 

 hairs in this particular species of Whale (in the Eight Whale 

 they are as fine as silk) ; they are broad at their bases, eight 

 inches across in the centre of the series. They grow from a 

 matrix of dense fibro-elastic material, and, except at the ante- 

 rior part, the finners are half an inch apart at their bases. 

 They are quite close together at the anterior part of the series, 

 where they take the form of hairs, five inches long ; behind 

 these hairs are very small or rudimentary plates, which gradu- 

 ally increase in length to the centre of the series, where they 

 are from four to five feet long. They commence to shorten 

 abruptly from about two feet from the posterior margin of the 

 mouth, and with the shortening they begin to converge, and 

 towards the throat they are continued across the palate as a 

 patch of veritable hairs on either side ; these patches of hair 

 are separated from each other centrally by a smooth surface 

 only three inches across at the extreme posterior part of the 

 mouth. Where the plates begin to shorten they become, as it 

 were, broken up into four or five pieces instead of the one plate, 

 and these give way later to the hairs ; at this part of the series 

 there are several rudimentary or the commencement of the 

 growth of new plates in evidence. There are from seven hundred 

 to eight hundred " finners " on either side, and their frayed 

 edges, forming the hairs all along their inner edges, extend from 

 the pointed tips to their bases. The Whale's mouth has the 



