In certain species of whales there is a tendency to the formation of irregular little points of horn on the palate; and it seems to be quite within the scope of natural selection to preserve all favourable variations, until the points were converted first into lamellated knobs or teeth, like those on the beak of a goose,—then into short lamellæ, like those of the domestic ducks,—and then into lamellæ, as perfect as those of the shovellerduck,—and finally into the gigantic plates of baleen, as in the mouth of the Greenland whale. In the family of the ducks, the lamellæ are first used as teeth, then partly as teeth and partly as a sifting apparatus, and at last almost exclusively for this latter purpose.
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