106 ARCTIC ZOOLOGY. 



which is by no means the case. This has reference to the 

 pacific habits of the monodon ; but certainly such an 

 extraordinary provision of annoyance could not have been 

 dispensed for ornament sake ; and though the creature 

 being destitute of teeth in the mouth, and subsisting on 

 mollusca and marine vegetables, seems little calculated for 

 destructive or predatory life ; yet this tremendous weapon 

 must render him formidable to every inhabitant of the 

 deep that obtrudes upon his peaceful haunts. 



It has been said that the monodon attacks the whale. 

 No doubt such a conflict occasionally comes under obser- 

 vation ; but it is not the simple, harmless, friendly, black 

 whale, that becomes the object of retribution for injury 

 received. Such tremendous retaliation is most frequently 

 inflicted on the balaena physalus, the finner, whose depre- 

 dations are indiscriminately exercised on every living 

 creature that is inferior in muscular power ; and few else 

 exist in those regions, and in that medium in which 

 animals of this order exercise peculiar dominion. The 

 astonishing force with which the monodon urges his speed 

 may be conceived from the fact of his tooth having been 

 sometimes found driven through the planking of vessels 

 navigating the Atlantic Ocean ; the animal, in his fury, 

 doubtless mistaking the body of the vessel for that of his 

 adversary. In such an onset, the tooth is often snapped 

 across, and is left in the wood through which it penetrated. , 



