Baleen

“ This [41] network acts as a sort of sieve. When the whale feeds it takes into its mouth a great gulp of water, which it drives out again through the intervals of the horny plates of baleen, the fluid thus traversing the sieve of horny fibres, which retains the minute creatures on which these marine monsters subsist. Now it is obvious, that if this baleen had once attained such a size and development as to be at all useful, then its preservation and augmentation within serviceable limits, would be promoted by "Natural Selection" alone. But how to obtain the beginning of such useful development? ”

“ In the Greenland Whale this whalebone hanging from the center of the jaw is sometimes twelve feet in length, and as there are from two hundred and fifty to four hundred in number, the great value of the baleen is readily seen. When the great animal opens its mouth, a row boat with its oarsmen could easily be taken in, yet the animal eats only small crustaceans, mollusks, worms and minute forms of life. ”

“ Baleen consists of a series of flattened, horny plates, several hundred in number, on each side of the palate, separated by a bare interval along the middle line. They are placed transversely to the long axis of the palate, with very short spaces between them. Each plate or blade is somewhat triangular in form, with the base attached to the palate, and the apex hanging downward. The outer edge of the blade is hard and smooth, but the inner edge and apex fray out into long, bristly fibers, so that the roof of the whale's mouth looks as if covered with hair, as described by Aristotle. ”

“ The inner edges and apices of these are frayed out into long fibres which act as strainers. In Balaena mysticetus, the Greenland whale, there are nearly four hundred of these plates, the longest of which often exceed 10 ft. In its development baleen resembles rhinoceros horn in that it consists of a number of epidermal hair-like fibres cemented together and growing from dermal papillae, though not from true hair follicles. ”

“ When feeding the whale swims with open mouth under the water, and all the objects which lie in the way of that great moving cavern are caught by the baleen, and never seen again. Along with their food they swallow a vast quantity of water, which passes back again through the nostrils, and is collected into a bag placed at the external orifice of the cavity of the nose, whence it is expelled by the pressure of powerful muscles through a very narrow opening pierced in the top of the head. ”

“ A stage beyond, and we reach the shoveler's condition, "in which the lamellæ would be two thirds of the length of the plates of baleen," in a species of whalebone whale (Balænoptera) possessing a slight development of these organs. And from this point, the further gradations leading onward to the enormous developments seen in the Greenland whale itself, are easily enough traced. Hypothetically, therefore, the path of development is clear enough. ”

“ BOOK I. (Folio) , CHAPTER III. (Fin-Back) .—Under this head I reckon a monster which, by the various names of Fin-Back, Tall-Spout, and Long-John, has been seen almost in every sea and is commonly the whale whose distant jet is so often descried by passengers crossing the Atlantic, in the New York packet-tracks. In the length he attains, and in his baleen, the Fin-back resembles the right whale, but is of a less portly girth, and a lighter colour, approaching to olive. His great lips present a cable-like aspect, formed by the intertwisting, slanting folds of large wrinkles. ”

“ Meanwhile Captain Nemo studied the herd of cetaceans, then addressed me:
“I was right to claim that baleen whales have enough natural enemies without counting man. These specimens will soon have to deal with mighty opponents. Eight miles to leeward, Professor Aronnax, can you see those blackish specks moving about?” ”

“ When the immense mouth opens, it takes in a large amount of water containing its food. The mouth then closes, but the water is permitted to flow out, the baleen acting like a sieve, retaining the food supply within and allowing the water to ooze away. ”

“ In the maritime world and in the realm of geographic exploration, whales have played a major role. This is the animal that first dragged the Basques in its wake, then Asturian Spaniards, Englishmen, and Dutchmen, emboldening them against the ocean’s perils, and leading them to the ends of the earth. Baleen whales like to frequent the southernmost and northernmost seas. ”

“ This Whale varies much in colour from black to mottled grey and black, and reaches a length of about 40 feet.
Fam. 2. Balaenidae.—The Right Whales of the genus Balaena are to be distinguished from Neobalaena and from the Rorquals by the following characters:—
The size is large, 50 to 60 feet. There is no dorsal fin. The head is more than or nearly one-fourth of the entire length of the animal. The baleen is very long. The throat is not grooved. The orbital process of the frontal is not wider than the downward process of the maxilla. The cervical vertebrae are all fused. ”

“ It is this habit of seeking their insect food only in the gloaming which makes nightjars among the most difficult of birds to study from life, and all accounts of their feeding habits must therefore be received with caution, particularly that which compares the bristles on the mouth with baleen in whales, serving as a sort of strainer for the capture of minute flying prey. ”

“ The reason for this immunity of primary attack by boats is that the finback is in the first place of little value when compared to either the humpback or “right” whale, for the coating of blubber is thin, and the plates of baleen (or whalebone) he possesses are very short ”

“ They feed on the surface—their food being small crustacea or “brit,” which they scoop up with open mouth and strain through the rows of baleen which hang from the upper jaw.
3—BOWHEAD WHALE. The Arctic or Greenland whale. Living in the cold waters of the high latitudes the blubber of this species is much thicker than that of Sperm or Right, one Bowhead rendering as much as three hundred barrels.
The quality of its oil, however, is much inferior to sperm oil, and for years it was hunted for its whalebone alone. ”

“ In certain species of whales there is a tendency to the formation of irregular little points of horn on the palate; and it seems to be quite within the scope of natural selection to preserve all favourable variations, until the points were converted, first into lamellated knobs or teeth, like those on the beak of a goose,— then into short lamellæ, like those of the domestic ducks,— and then into lamellæ, as perfect as those of the shoveller-duck,— and finally into the gigantic plates of baleen, as in the mouth of the Greenland whale. ”

“ The whale, the largest of all mammals, strains protozoans and other small animals and plants out of the water by means of hanging plates of whalebone or baleen, the slender filaments of which form a sieve from the top to the bottom of the mouth. ”

“ It may here be mentioned that the modification of the mouth-structure of the right whale is entirely in relation to its food. It is by this apparatus that it is enabled to avail itself of the minute but highly nutritious crustaceans and pteropods which swarm in immense shoals in the seas it frequents. The large mouth enables it to take in at one time a sufficient quantity of water filled with these small organisms, and the length and delicate structure of the baleen make it an efficient strainer or hair sieve by which the water can be drained off. ”

“ The cruises at first were toward Greenland after the so-called right whales, a variety of the cetaceans which has an added commercial value because of the baleen, or whalebone, which hangs in great strips from the roof of its mouth to its lower jaw, forming a sort of screen or sieve by which it sifts its food out of prodigious mouthfuls of sea water. This most enormous of known living creatures feeds upon very small shell-fish, Page 125swarm in the waters it frequents. ”

“ They do not cover any teeth, but they protect a pair of very formidable jaws. The cavernous interior of the mouth is filled up with two series of whalebone laminæ, about three hundred in each, which require particular description. The whalebone, or baleen, as it is called, consists of numerous parallel plates, layers, or laminæ, each of which is formed of a central coarse fibrous layer lying between two that are compact and externally polished. But this outer part does not completely cover the inner; a kind of edge is exposed, and this edge terminates in a loose fringed or fibrous extremity. ”

“ This is a very favourite pastime on board whalers, though, in ships such as ours, the crew have little opportunity for doing anything, hardly any leisure during daylight being allowed. But our carpenter was a famous workman at "scrimshaw," and he started half a dozen walking-sticks forthwith. A favourite design is to carve the bone into the similitude of a rope, with "worming" of smaller line along its lays. A handle is carved out of a whale's tooth, and insets of baleen, silver, cocoa-tree, or ebony, give variety and finish. ”

“ Figure 40.—Detail of the head of a humpback whale harpooned off Japan. Note the knobs along the top of the head and on the lower jaw, the rounded projection near the tip of the lower jaw and the wide ventral grooves. The large mass of tissue to the left of the animal is its tongue. In the inset photo from a Canadian whaling station, note the baleen plates, less than 3 feet (0.9 m) long and dark olive green to black in color. (Photos by Japanese Whales Research Institute, courtesy of H. Omura; and J. G. Mead [inset] .) ”

“ We had killed nothing as yet, except a few eider ducks, and one or two ice-birds—the most graceful winged creatures I have ever seen, with immensely long pinions, and plumage of spotless white. Although enormous seals from time to time used to lift their wise, grave faces above the water, with the dignity of sea-gods, none of us had any very great inclination to slay such rational human-looking creatures, and—with the exception of these and a white fish, a species of whale—no other living thing had been visible. ”

“ Having got our wood and water on board, we again put to sea, cruising in various parts of the ocean known to be frequented by whales. A bright look-out was kept for their spouts as the monsters rose to the surface to breathe. The instant a spout was seen all was life and animation on board; the boats were lowered, generally two or three at a time, and away they pulled to be ready to attack the whale as it again rose to the surface. I remember, the first time I saw one of the monsters struck, I shouted and jumped about the deck as eagerly as if I myself were engaged in the work. ”

“ The perpetual light, the glare of the white ice, the deep blue of the water, these are the things which one remembers most clearly, and the dry, crisp, exhilarating air, which makes mere life the keenest of pleasures. And then there are the innumerable sea-birds, whose call is for ever ringing in your ears—the gulls, the fulmars, the snow-birds, the burgomasters, the loons, and the rotjes. These fill the air, and below, the waters are for ever giving you a peep of some strange new creature. The commercial whale may not often come your way, but his less valuable brethren abound on every side. ”

“ This animal attacks the balæna with its young, in its places of retirement, and as they turn to defend themselves, it pierces them just as though they had been attacked by the beak of a Liburnian galley. The balænæ, devoid of all flexibility, without energy to defend themselves, are well aware that their only resource is to take to flight in the open sea and to range over the whole face of the ocean ”

“ Just at this interval, a servant who had gone to the beach with his net to catch a fish for his majesty's service, on reaching the sea, saw a large whale which had been thrown on the beach and was dead. But inside the fish he saw something move, and heard a voice that said, "Take me out of this, take me out of this." The servant fetched a knife, and very carefully cut the skin of the whale, and he then saw the head of a maiden, and he continued to rip up the fish, greatly astonished at what he saw, and at last extricated alive the maiden from the belly of the great fish. ”

“ We have dominion over the fishes of the sea, we strew the net and bring them in for our food; we hunt the whale for his oil and for the fringe of bone in his mouth; we dive into the sea after the oyster that we may extract from it the pearl, and we strip the shell of its rainbow-coloured scales to inlay therewith our furniture. ”

“ I was amazed at the variety of its inhabitants, yet how small a part could I trace. I was astonished at the number of birds, flitting over the ocean; and I thought, if provision was made for them, I had no reason for fear. On a brilliant moonlight evening, our ship struck on something, which threw us off our seats! What could it be? we were in the centre of the Western ocean. We soon discovered it was a sleeping whale; we also beheld the water-spout, so often described, as a surprising phenomenon. ”

“ By this line the stricken animal tows the harpooner’s boat along with fearful rapidity, an immense wave curling far above the high bow. The flesh of the young whale is excellent,—very like veal,—and with the black population the whaling season is one of great feasting and enjoyment. ”

“ We have been studying together these wonderful creatures, the manatee, the whale, and the seal. These are not the only mammals that live in the sea; the sea-lion, porpoise, dolphin, and others are also sea-mammals. In a book like this we cannot discuss all the animals of any large order, and now we turn from these huge citizens of the sea, to learn something about a small but equally curious flying mammal, a citizen of the air,—the bat. It is a little beast, universally disliked, even feared ”