And his mouth--but you could not see into that for it was very busy nursing.

His mother, however, lay with her mouth half open, a vast cavern of a mouth, nearly a third the length of her body--and it looked all whalebone.

For, you must know, she was of the ancient and honorable family of the Right Whales, who scorn to grow any teeth, and therefore must live on soup so to speak." Here he paused, and looked at the Babe as much as to say, "Now, I suppose you're going to interrupt again, in spite of all I've said." But the Babe, restraining his curiosity about the soup, only sat staring at him with solemn eyes.

So he went on.
"You see, it was a most convenient kind of soup, a _live_ soup, that they fed upon.

The sea, in great spots and patches, is full of tiny creatures, sometimes jelly-fish, sometimes little squid of various kinds, all traveling in countless hosts from somewhere-or-other to somewhere else, they know not why.