graminivorous animal. The Great Creator
has in His omniscience therefore ordained that
this, the largest of His creatures, should have
the wide expanse of the ocean for its habitat;
there, it would have plenty of room for its
roamings, and plenty of food for its support.
The whale, therefore, preserving every organ
typical of the land animal and remaining a
true mammalian in every sense, associates
with fishes, and grazes upon the products of
the deep.

The sea, as we well know, swarms with
life; but, the minute creatures therein exceed
by myriads the larger forms. Upon these
atoms the whale feeds, and not only feeds,
but gets fat, which fat it converts into
blubber. Now, for the sake of this blubber
man will brave the perils of the Arctic seas,
and bring home with him, in the form of
valuable lamp oil, the substance of acres of
minute sea creatures, which, but for this
wise economy in the system of creation,
would have lived and died, neglected and
useless. Thus we see in the works of the
benevolent Creator wheel within wheel—
nothing lost, nothing allowed to decay, all
working together with an admirable and
designed order. The creatures which principally
form the food of the whale are a delicate
mollusk called the Clio Borealis (of which
specimens may be seen in the College of Surgeons).
These creatures live in patches on
the surface of the Northern Ocean; and
could we look down on those Arctic seas
from a balloon, we should see greenish
and blackish patches here and there
— these are formed by colonies of the Clio
Borealis. A somewhat similar appearance
may be observed on stagnant fresh-water
ponds, where the water is coloured here
and there by the larva of gnats and other
insects.

Having found out the whereabout of his
food, the whale opens his gigantic mouth,
and charges at full speed in among them.
Drawn into his mouth by the vast current of
water thus created, like sticks in a mill tail,
they become engulphed in the natural trawl-net
of the sea giant, who then composedly
shuts his mouth, and expels the water through
the interstices of the baleen, leaving the
Clios, and whatever else he is lucky enough
to catch, high and dry upon the hairy roof
of his mouth. In the specimen under notice
we observed that there were several folds of
skin, extending from the tip of the lower jaw
some distance down the belly; and the man
informed us that when the lower jaw was
lifted off the ground, the tongue was left on
it some three feet below, the folds of skin at
the same time becoming quite smooth. Here,
then, we have an explanation of the use of
these folds: they form an immense pouch,
into which the detained animals drop, being
freed from the hair. The bag of a lady's
work-table gives a very good idea of the
pouch of the whale— the silk portion representing
the folds, and the board at the bottom,
the tongue.

The reader is not very likely ever to see a
whale at feed; he may, however, very likely,
see a duck feeding in a gutter. Let him observe,
and he will see, that (to compare great
things with small) the duck goes to work in
a very similar manner to the whale. The
duck is looking after minute creatures— so is
the whale; so he takes a billful of mud,
and, squirting out the refuse, he retains what
is good to eat. The bird has no baleen, and
no pouch; but, nevertheless, he has an equally
beautiful apparatus in the conformation of
his bill, which answers the same purpose,
and at the same time is less cumbersome.
From the size of the whale's mouth one
would naturally be led to conclude that the
gullet (or Å“sophagus) is of an enormous size.
No such thing— it is exceedingly small. In
the whale examined— forty-eight feet long—
the entrance to the gullet is hardly large
enough to admit a man's hand. Why is this?
The Rorqual does not confine himself to the
Clio Borealis, but he feeds upon sprats, herrings,
and little fish. If he had a capacious
gullet, the fish having been swallowed might,
not liking their new quarters, wish to return
again to the sea; had the whale an enormous
gape, like a boa constrictor, they might easily
do this, as the stomach is on the same line as
the mouth. This is, however, anticipated by
the form of the Å“sophageal pipe. Upon examining
a section of it, which is not much
larger than the thickness of a good-sized
walking-stick, we see that it has numerous
muscular fibres surrounding it, and which
can close it effectually; nay, more— the inner
lining is disposed in longitudinal fibres the
size of a little finger, which, meeting together
in the centre, effectually render it impervious
at the will of the animal.

Wishing to examine more minutely the
base of the skull of the Whitechapel specimen,
we crawled in, through the place
where the throat formerly was situated, and
the idea of the prophet Jonah naturally
crossed our mind. It is not, however, quite
certain that Jonah was swallowed by a whale
in the strict acceptation of the term. In the
book of Jonah the word whale is not used;
we read, Now the Lord prepared a great fish
to swallow up Jonah; in St. Matthew we
have, in the English translation, the word
whale expressly mentioned; in the Greek,
however, the word is ?????, which signifies,
usually, a whale, but may mean also any
large fish. If we may, without presumption,
attempt to account for a miracle, we may
mention that it has been supposed by some
that the fish in question was a shark, whose
gullet in a large specimen is quite large
enough to admit a man. Under this idea, a
shark called Squalus Charcharias has sometimes
had the name Jona Piscis, or the Fish
of Jonah, applied to it.

The exhibition of whales has not been