is fish-like, the skin
smooth and hairless. It is a remarkable conclusion arrived at by the
investigators of the remains of extinct animals that a little
four-legged creature the size of a spaniel, and intermediate in
character between a hedgehog and a dog, was the common ancestor from
which have been derived such widely different creatures as the whale
and the bat, the elephant and the man. We can at the present day trace
with some certainty the gradual modifications of form by which in the
course of many millions of years the change from the primitive,
dog-like hedgehog to each of those four living "types" has proceeded.

The whales of to-day are divided into the toothed whales and the
whalebone whales. The great cachalot or sperm whale is captured,
chiefly in the Southern Ocean, and killed in large numbers for the
sake of the "spermaceti," or "sperm oil," which forms the great mass
of its head, but he is so fierce and active that he is not easily
captured, and is not in immediate danger of extinction. The smaller
toothed whales, the killers, dolphins, and porpoises (though one of
them--the bottle-nosed whale--is being killed out), are not as yet
seriously threatened by commercial man. But the whalebone whales are
in a parlous state. The Right whales, as they are called, are the
chief of these. They are huge creatures, 60 ft. in length, with an
enormous head: it is as much as one third of the total length in the
Greenland whale. Besides the Greenland species there are four other
"right whales," which may be considered as four varieties of one
species. The head is not quite so large in them. The Biscay whale is
one of them, and was hunted until it was exterminated in the Bay of
Biscay, when the whalers, extending their operations further and
further north, came upon the Greenland whale, which proved to be even
more valuable than the Biscay species. The huge mouth in these two
whales has hanging from its sides within the lips a series of long
bars or planks of wonderfully strong, elastic, horny substance--the
"baleen" or "whalebone"--each plank being as much as eight or in rare
cases twelve feet long. Following close on one another and having
hairy edges, they act as strainers so as to separate the floating food
of the whale from the water which rushes through its mouth as it
swims. The whalebone is of great value commercially, as is also the
fat or oil. A hundred years ago whalebone fetched only L25 a ton, now
the sam