108 MARINE MAMMALS OF THE NORTH-WESTERN COAST. 
across the tail ; the ridges of the tail run the same way along the body, and form 
ridges on the sides of the rump. The back appears depressed and flat, three or 
four feet posterior to the neck. The head forms about one -seventh of the whole 
length of the animal, being small, blunt, and round. The mouth is small and 
incapable of much extension, having a wedge-shaped under lip. The eyes are only 
one inch in their largest diameter, and are placed on a line with the opening of 
the mouth at about thirteen inches from the snout. The opening of the ear, 
situated six inches behind the eye on the same horizontal line, is of the diameter 
of a small knitting-needle. The spiracle, or blow- hole, is situated immediately over 
the eyes, and is a singular semicircular opening about three and one -half inches in 
diameter, and one inch and a half in length. The fins are twelve or fourteen 
inches long, and six or eight broad, and placed at one -fifth of the length of the 
animal from the snout. Where fixed to the body, the fin is elliptical. In the adult 
Narwhal, the ground is wholly white, with dark -gray or blackish spots. These 
spots are of a roundish or oblong form ; on the back, where they seldom exceed 
two inches in diameter, they are the darkest and most crowded together. On the 
sides these spots are fainter, smaller, and more open. On the belly they are 
extremely faint and few. A close patch of brownish -black, without any white, is 
often found on the upper part of the neck, just behind the blow -hole. The sucker 
Narwhals are almost uniformly, of a bluish -gray, or slate color. Very old individ- 
uals become almost white. The remarkable peculiarity of the Narwhal is its long, 
spiral, ivory tusk, which grows from the left side of the inferior portion of the 
upper jaw, sometimes to the length of ten feet or more. This tusk is generally 
covered with a dark, greasy incrustation above, while below and at the point it is 
kept white by use. In addition to this external tusk, peculiar to the male, there 
is another on the right side of the head, about nine inches long, imbedded in the 
skull. In females, as well as in young males, in which the tooth does not appear 
externally, the rudiments of two tusks are generally found in the upper jaw." * 
The food of the Narwhal is said to consist of molluscous animals, and some- 
times fish, although the creature is destitute of teeth exclusive of its tusks. The 
Narwhal is considered a harmless animal, but active and possessed of considerable 
swiftness ; yet, when on the surface of the water for the purpose of respiration, it 
* Scoresby, in his Greenland voyage, killed a of conical form and obliquely truncated at the 
female Narwhal having an external horn four thickest end, and without the knot formed in 
feet three inches long, twelve inches of which many of the milk -tusks. The horn was on the 
were imbedded in the skull. It had also, as left side of the head, and the spiral was dex- 
usual, a milk -tusk nine inches long, which was trorsal. 
