


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 sub-divisions 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. 
The original of this specimen was captured in New- 
Model of foundland, and the model is accurately reproduced from 
Sulphur- : i 
Te ay careful measurements. This huge creature is not only 
Whale the 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 “spout- 
ing” 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 sup- 
posed. Models to scale of the other whalebone whales, and the toothed 
sperm whale, and reproductions of smaller whales and porpoises are 
hung near for comparison. 
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