Then the teeth were
heroic in size, protruding some four or five inches from the gum,
and solidly set more than that into its firm and compact
substance. They were certainly not intended for mastication,
being, where thickest, three inches apart, and tapering to a
short point, curving slightly backwards. In this specimen, a
female, and therefore small as I have said, there were twenty of
them on each side, the last three or four near the gullet being
barely visible above the gum.
Another most convincing reason why no mastication could have been
possible was that there were no teeth visible in the upper jaw.
Opposed to each of the teeth was a socket where a tooth should
apparently have been, and this was conclusive evidence of the
soft and yielding nature of the great creature's food. But there
were signs that at some period of the development of the whale it
had possessed a double row of teeth, because at the bottom of
these upper sockets we found in a few cases what seemed to be an
abortive tooth, not one that was growing, because they had no
roots, but a survival of teeth that had once been perfect and
useful, but from disuse, or lack of necessity for them, had
gradually ceased to come to maturity.
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