Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 20.djvu/536

WEYMOUTH. chief features are the sea-terrace and an esplanade, over a mile long, adorned with a statue of George III. Ship and boat building, rope and sail making, and brewing are carried on, and there is steam traffic with France and the Channel Islands. The boroughs were united in 1571, and enlarged in 1895. Population, in 1901, 19,831.  WEYPRECHT,, (1838-81). A German Polar explorer, born near Michelstadt, Hesse. He entered the Austrian navy in 1856, and with Payer undertook, in 1871, an expedition to Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla, and in 1872-74 led the great Austrian Arctic expedition, the result of which was the discovery and exploration of Franz Josef Land. At the meeting of German naturalists at Gratz in 1875, he proposed a plan to substitute for the polar expeditions a systematic exploration by means of an international system of permanent observation stations. This plan was carried into effect in 1882-83, after Weyprecht had died at Michelstadt. He published: Die Metamorphosen des Polareises ( 1879); Astronomische und geodätische Bestimungen der österreichisch-ungarischen arktischen Expedition (1877); Praktische Anleitung zur Beobachtung der Polarlichter und der magnetischen Erscheinungen in hohen Breiten (1881), besides contributions to Petermann's Mitteilungen and other periodicals. Consult Littrow, Karl Weyprecht, Erinnerungen und Briefe (Vienna, 1881).  WEYR,, (1847—). An Austrian sculptor, born in Vienna. He was a pupil of Bauer and Cesar in the academy, where with his group of “Samson and Delilah” he won the Reichel prize in 1870. In 1878 he was awarded in competition the work of decorating the Grillparzer monument (reliefs of the Hexedra). He attained repute through his decorative reliefs and his experiments in polychrome sculpture. His works include the great fountain before the Imperial Palace, Vienna; his chef-d'œuvre, the great frieze of the “Triumphal Procession of Bacchus and Ariadne” for the pediment of the new Burgtheater; and numerous decorative features for the museum and university buildings.  WHALE (AS. hwæl, OHG. wal-fisc, Ger. Walfisch, whale). Any large marine mammal of the order (q.v.), the only essential difference between a whale and a dolphin or porpoise being the size, although the name is more particularly applicable to the toothless or whale-bone whales. One of the most widely current popular errors in zoölogy is the notion that a whale is some kind of a fish. The warm blood, the well-developed brain, the double circulation, the lungs, and the mammary glands and reproductive organs, all combine, however, to show clearly the far higher organization of a whale as compared with even the highest fishes. The young of whales are born alive, well developed after a long pregnancy, and are suckled and cared for by the mother as in the case of land mammals. Nevertheless, in their extreme adaptation to an exclusively aquatic life, whales have certain superficial resemblances to fishes, especially in the elongated, tapering body, the fin-like limbs, and the termination of the body in a caudal fin, the principal organ of locomotion. The skin of a whale is, however, smooth and without scales, although there are frequently

barnacles and parasitic crustaceans attached to it in considerable numbers. The only outgrowths of the skin are hair-like bristles near the mouth, and these are not always present, being rather a characteristic of the young. The fore limbs of whales are supported by the same bones as in other mammals, but are very much flattened, and the digits, which have an unusual number of phalanges, are all united in a common skin. The clavicle is wanting, the scapula is very large, and the humerus and forearm bones are very short. The hind limbs are entirely wanting, the only evidence of their ancestral occurrence being a pair of small, slender bones, completely imbedded in the body wall and not connected with the backbone, supposed to represent vestigial ischia. The caudal fin, unlike that of a fish, is flattened horizontally, and the two halves, known as ‘flukes,’ are therefore right and left, not dorsal and ventral as in a fish; this fin is connected with the body by a narrow but extremely muscular part, known as the ‘small.’ Not only does the tail serve as the organ of locomotion, but it is also the most effective weapon of both offense and defense which the true whales possess. Most whales have more or less of a dorsal fin on the median line of the back, but it is simply an outgrowth of the integument, and even in those forms where it is most highly developed it has no bony supports. The head of a whale is very large proportionately, in some species as much as one-third of the total length. The eyes are small, as is the ear-opening; there are no external ears. The nostrils or nostril (there is often only one) are situated far back from the nose, on the vertex of the head, and are closed by a plug-like valve, which can only be opened by pressure from the inside. The so-called ‘blowing’ of a whale takes place through the nostrils, and is merely the release of the long-confined moisture-laden breath, which condenses in the cooler air and gives the appearance of a column of water being blown from the nostrils. The old idea that a whale takes water in at the mouth and blows it out through the nostrils is entirely baseless, although water may be blown into the air if the breath is released before the animal has quite reached the surface. The mouth of a whale is always large, though the œsophagus may be quite narrow. Teeth are wanting in the true whales, but in all other cetaceans they are present, at least in the lower jaw, and in the embryos of true whales they are found well formed about the middle of fœtal life, but they are gradually absorbed and no trace of them exists at birth. The teeth are always simple, with conical or compressed crowns and single roots, and there is only one set, milk teeth not being developed. The number of teeth shows a wide range of variation.

In the toothless whales the roof of the mouth is provided with a large number of vertical horny plates, quite close together, placed transversely on each side, so that there is a bare space in the median line. The outer end of each plate is smooth and hard, but the inner end is frayed out into long bristly fibres, so that the roof of the mouth looks as though covered with hair. (See .) This whole apparatus serves as a sieve for straining out the minute animals on which these whales feed, the water being taken into the mouth anteriorly and then let run out at the sides of the mouth,