NATURAL HISTORY. xxiii 



valuable museum of the Royal College of Surgeons; and an accoimt of a female 

 Narwhal, which had a horn similar to the male, is given in the 13th volume of the 

 Transactions of the Linnsean Society, p. 620; but both these cases are of rare 

 occurrence. 



The largest horn I have seen measured 8i feet. In all the males the rudiments of a 

 second horn or tooth is present ; and in the female are two such rudimental teeth, each 

 about 8 inches in length. 



A female killed in June had one young in utero, nearly matured, of a bluish-brown 

 colour, nearly 5 feet long. 



Several skeletons of this animal were seen by us as we travelled along the eastern 

 coast of the Peninsula of Boothia, but only one horn was found amongst them; it mea- 

 sured 7 feet in length, 9g inches in circumference at its insertion, and weighed I41b. 6oz. 



19.— BAL^NA MYSTICETUS ^Black Whale). 



Bal.s;na Mysticetus. — Cuv: Rig. Anim. — vol. i., p. 296. 



Fab : Faun. Grasnl.—^. 32. 



Scoresby's Arctic Regions — vol. ii., pi. xii. 



The capture of the Whale, which gives employment to several thousands of our 

 seamen, and has annually produced, on an average of the last twenty years, between 

 eleven and twelve thousand tons of oil, and from five to six hundred tons of whalebone ; 

 has of late years greatly declined, owing to the increasing difficulties attending the 

 fishery. Wearied by the incessant persecutions of man, the Whale has lately aban- 

 doned all the accessible parts of the Spitzbergen Sea, where it was by no means 

 unusual to see sixty or seventy sail of British vessels engaged in its capture. 



On the east side of Baffin's Bay, as far as the 72° of latitude, abundance of Whales 

 of a large size were to be found, some few years ago ; but, hke the fishery in the Spitz- 

 bergen Sea, this also was deserted. Tlie Whales retired to the westward of the then 

 considered impenetrable barrier of ice that occupies the middle of Baffin's Bay. 



In 1818 that barrier was passed by the first Expedition of Discovery, sent by the go- 

 vernment to those regions ; where the haunts of the Whale and the nursery for its young 

 were laid open to the fishermen, whose daring enterprise and perseverance in following 



