. If you can learn what whalebone is, and
what is its use, you will know a good deal about the habits of the whale
itself.

The substance which we call whalebone is not true bone. It would be much
more correct to call it whales' teeth, as it occupies the same position
as teeth, and, in a measure, serves the same purpose. Moreover, the
whale has a skeleton of true bones underlying its flesh, and serving as
a framework for its huge, bulky body. These bones are very light and
porous, and this is a great advantage to the whale, which spends most of
its time floating upon the surface of the water without having to make
much effort.

There are numerous kinds of whales, and they do not all yield the
substance which we call whalebone. The sperm whale, or cachalot, has
teeth in its lower jaw, and no whalebone whatever. The Greenland whale,
on the other hand, which is the one most sought after for its oil, has
no teeth, but abundance of whalebone, which hangs from the sides of its
upper jaw.

In order to get some idea of what this whalebone is like as it hangs in
the whale's mouth, we must try to picture what the whale itself is like.
The largest of them grow to something like sixty feet in length. The
head is unusually large, and forms about one-third of the whole body,
and the inside of the mouth is about as large as a ship's cabin or a
very small room. The strips of whalebone, which reach from the upper jaw
to the lower one, must, therefore, be very large. The largest strips,
which hang in the middle of the jaws, are rather like large planks,
being from ten to fifteen feet long, and about twelve inches across at
their widest part. They are thinner than planks, however, and perhaps we
might better compare them to long and broad saw-blades. There are
altogether about three hundred of these whalebone planks or blades in
the whale's mouth. They are set transversely--that is to say, one narrow
edge of each piece touches the tongue, while the other edge lies against
the cheek or lip. They lie so close together that from the middle of the
edge of one blade to the middle of the edge of the next the distance is
less than an inch, and yet there is a space between them. The whole set
extends like a huge grate round the whale's mouth, the bars of whalebone
being long in the middle of the sides of the jaws, and growing shorter
near the back and front.

Whalebone is very fibrous or stringy, and it splits very readily. The
lower ends of