articulates, if I am not mistaken, and as such----"

"Phew!" said Cousin Benedict again, shaking his lead.

"For instance----I find you passably disdainful for an entomologist!"

"Entomologist, it may be," replied Cousin Benedict, "but more
particularly hexapodist, Captain Hull, please remember."

"At all events," replied Captain Hull, "if these crustaceans do not
interest you, it can't be helped; but it would be otherwise if you
possessed a whale's stomach. Then what a regale! Do you see, Mrs.
Weldon, when we whalers, during the fishing season, arrive in sight of
a shoal of these crustaceans, we have only time to prepare our harpoons
and our lines. We are certain that the game is not distant."

"Is it possible that such little beasts can feed such large ones?"
cried Jack.

"Ah! my boy," replied Captain Hull, "little grains of vermicelli, of
flour, of fecula powder, do they not make very good porridge? Yes; and
nature has willed that it should be so. When a whale floats in the
midst of these red waters, its soup is served; it has only to open its
immense mouth. Myriads of crustaceans enter it. The numerous plates of
those whalebones with which the animal's palate is furnished serve to
strain like fishermen's nets; nothing can get out of them again, and
the mass of crustaceans is ingulfed in the whale's vast stomach, as the
soup of your dinner in yours."

"You think right, Jack," observed Dick Sand, "that Madam Whale does not