164 THE OCEAN. 



man, "that the Narwhal, an animal without teeth, 

 a small mouth, and with stiff lips, should be able 

 to catch and swallow so large a fish as a skate, 

 the breadth of which is nearly three times as great 

 as the width of its own mouth. It seems probable 

 that the skates had been 'pierced with the horn, and 

 killed before they were devoured; otherwise it is 

 difficult to imagine how the Narwhal could have 

 swallowed them, or how a fish of any activity would 

 have permitted itself to be taken, and sucked down 

 the throat of a smooth-mouthed animal, without 

 teeth to detain and compress it." 



We know but little of the true fishes that inhabit 

 the Arctic Seas. It appears, however, that many of the 

 more important of those which are common with us, 

 are common also there; not the subjects of an annual 

 migration, but widely distributed at all times. On 

 the authority of a French naval officer, it would even 

 seem that some species at least may undergo a sort 

 of torpidity. " Admiral Pleville Lepley, who had 

 had his home on the ocean for half a century, as- 

 sured M. Lacepede that in Greenland, in the smaller 

 bays surrounded with rock, so common on this coast, 

 where the water is always calm, and the bottom 

 generally soft mud and juice, he had seen in the 

 beginning of spring myriads of Mackerel, with their 

 heads sunk some inches in the mud, their tails ele- 

 vated vertically above its level ; and that the mass 

 of fish was such, that at a distance it might be taken 

 for a reef of rocks. The Admiral supposed that the 

 Mackerel had passed the winter torpid, under the ice 

 and snow, and added that, for fifteen or twenty days 



