"Never mind, Tom," said Mr. Barnum: "come and see the fisherman that carries his basket under his chin!"
Tom did not understand this joke at first, but Mr. Barnum explained that he meant the pelican, which has a pouch under its beak in which it carries home the fish to feed its young.
"Look out, Trixie!" cried Tom, when they saw the whale. "He swallowed a man once."
"Did this very whale swallow a man?" asked Trixie, solemnly; "and did you know the man?"
"Well, no—not exactly; but I knew of him."
"What was his name?"
"Jonah."
"O, Tom Van Tassel! That was as much as fifty years ago, and Jonah was a bible man. The whale looks kind and I'm not afraid of him," and Trixie went up very close. "But what makes him so floppy? I should think the whalebones in him would stiffen him."
And then Mr. Barnum explained that what we call whalebone is something that grows in the mouth of a whale, and is used as a strainer, to separate the water from the food.
They thought the shark a mean-looking creature, and they were surprised to learn that it turns on its back to bite.