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Show Inside ml a W halo's Month. The great Greenland whale has no teeth, its baleen plates, or whalebone, taking their place. Along the center of the palate runs a strong ridge, and on each side of this thore is a wide depression, depres-sion, along which the plates are inserted. These are long and flat, hanging free, and are placed transversely that is, across the mouth, with their sides parallel and near each other. The base and outer edge of the plates are of solid whalebone, but the inner edges are fringed, filling up the interior of the mouth and acting as a strainer for the food, which consists of the small swimming uiollusks and medusas, me-dusas, or jelly fishes. This whale rarely! if ever, swallows anything larger than a herring, shoals of these small creatures being entangled in the fibers of the baleen, ba-leen, the water which does not escape " from the mouth .being expelled by the blowholes. Though the cavity of this whale's mouth is large enough to contain a ship's long boat, the gullet is not larger than a man's fist. The lower jaw has neither baleen nor teeth, but has large, fleshy lips, within which the upper is received re-ceived when the mouth is closed. San Francisco Chronicle. |