Whalebone.
This substance is improperly named, since it has none of the properties of bone; its correct name is baleen. It is found attached to the upper jaw, and serves to strain the water which the whale takes into its mouth, and to retain the small animals upon which it subsists. For this purpose the baleen is abundant, sometimes eight hundred pieces in one whale, placed across each other at regular distances, with the fringed edge towards the mouth.