What pretty smooth things, turning head over heels, and saying, “Hush, Hush!”
They don’t really turn clean over; and that “Hush” is their way of breathing.
Are they the young ones of that great monster?
No; they are porpoises. That big one is, I believe, a bottle-nose. But if you want to know about the kinds of whales, you must ask Dr. Flower at the Royal College of Surgeons, and not me: and he will tell you wonderful things about them.—How some of them have mouths full of strong teeth, like these porpoises; and others, like the great sperm whale in the South Sea, have huge teeth in their lower jaws, and in the upper only holes into which those teeth fit; others like the bottle-nose, only two teeth or so in the lower jaw; and others, like the narwhal, two straight tusks in the upper jaw, only one of which grows, and is what you call a narwhal’s horn.
Oh yes. I know of a walking-stick made of one.
And strangest of all, how the right-whales have a few little teeth when they are born, which never come through the gums; but, instead, they grow all along their gums, an enormous curtain of clotted hair, which serves as a net to keep in the tiny sea-animals on which they feed, and let the water strain out.
You mean whalebone? Is whalebone hair?
So it seems. And so is a rhinoceros’s horn. A rhinoceros used to be hairy all over in old times: but now he carries all his hair on the end of his nose, except a few bristles on his tail. And the right-whale, not to be done in oddity, carries all his on his gums.
But have no whales any hair?
No real whales: but the Manati, which is very nearly a whale, has long bristly hair left. Don’t you remember M.’s letter about the one he saw at Rio Janeiro?