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The entire head of the shoveller, though incomparably less bulky, is about one-eighteenth of the length of the head of a moderately large Balaenoptera rostrata, in which species the baleen is only nine inches long; so that if we were to make the head of the shoveller as long as that of the Balaenoptera, the lamellae would be six inches in length, that is, two-thirds of the length of the baleen in this species of whale.
From this stage, in which the lamellae would be two-thirds of the length of the plates of baleen in the Balaenoptera rostrata, gradations, which may be observed in still-existing Cetaceans, lead us onward to the enormous plates of baleen in the Greenland whale.
The middle and longest lamina in the Greenland whale is ten, twelve, or even fifteen feet in length; but in the different species of Cetaceans there are gradations in length; the middle lamina being in one species, according to Scoresby, four feet, in another three, in another eighteen inches, and in the Balaenoptera rostrata only about nine inches in length.
"Because I've seen big baleen whales, sir, whales measuring up to 100 feet long! I've even heard that those rorqual whales off the Aleutian Islands sometimes get over 150 feet." "That strikes me as exaggerated," I replied. "Those animals are only members of the genus Balaenoptera furnished with dorsal fins, and like sperm whales, they're generally smaller than the bowhead whale."
It pushed its head up once in characteristic killer fashion, but we judged from its small curved dorsal fin that it was a specimen of Balaenoptera acutorostrata, not Orca gladiator. A strong south-westerly wind was blowing on October 20 and the pack was working. The 'Endurance' was imprisoned securely in the pool, but our chance might come at any time.
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