MODEL OF WHALE 93 



Southeast Wing 

 MAMMALS OF THE WORLD 



Continuing east from the hall where the apes and monkeys are, we 

 pass the elevators, to enter the hall of the Southeast Wing, devoted mainly 

 to a series of exhibits illustrating the characters of mammals, their 

 principal groups, or orders, the main subdivisions of these, known as 

 families, and various interesting peculiarities of habits and structure. 

 Each family is, so far as possible, represented by a mounted specimen 

 and a skeleton. Walking around the room from left to right one passes 

 from the egg-laying Platypus to man, represented by the figure of an 

 Australian native, armed with the characteristic boomerang. Incident- 

 ally one sees among other things the modifications of form and structure 

 for various modes of locomotion, notices the superiority in brain of 

 mammals over other vertebrates, learns that animals that outwardly 

 look alike may be very distantly related, sees illustrations of albinism 

 and melanism, and is shown how the coat of the hare changes from brown 

 to white. 



Above the cases is a frieze representing marine scenes, which serves 

 as a background for groups of porpoises, dolphins and other small mem- 

 bers of the whale family. The most striking object in the hall is the 

 life-size model of a sulphur-bottom whale, seventy-nine feet in length. 

 Model of The original of this specimen was captured in New- 



Sulphur- foundland, and the model is accurately reproduced from 

 bottom careful measurements. This huge creature is not only 



Whale iYie largest of living animals, but, so far as we know, 



the largest animal that has ever lived; a specimen of this size weighs 

 from sixty to seventy tons, about twice as much as Brontosaurus. As 

 can be seen by examining the models of a whale's head attached to the 

 pillar, the whalebone which takes the place of teeth hangs in great plates 

 from the inside of the upper jaw. This whalebone acts as a strainer in 

 the mouth of the whale, and extracts the small animals from the sea 

 water which the whale takes into his mouth when feeding. The food 

 consists mostly of tiny crustaceans less than an inch in length. Although 

 whales and porpoises live in the water, they are not fishes, but are warm- 

 blooded and breathe by means of lungs, not gills. The whale must come 

 to the surface to breathe and the so-called "spouting" is merely the 

 result of the warm air being expelled from the lungs when he breathes. 

 A whale does not spout water, as is commonly supposed. Models to scale 

 of the other whalebone whales, and the toothed sperm whale, and repro- 

 ductions of smaller whales and porpoises are hung near for comparison, 

 among them one of the fierce Killer, the worst enemy of the larger whales. 



