188 MAMMALIA. 



MoNODON, Lin. 



The Narwhals have no teeth properly speaking, but mere long, straight 

 and pointed tusks, implanted in the intermaxillary bone, and directed in 

 the line of the axis of the body. The form of their body and that of 

 their head greatly resemble that of the Porpoises. One species only is 

 well known, the 



M. imonoceros, L. ; Scoresby, Arct. Reg. pi. xv.* (The Nar- 

 whal). Whose tusk is spirally furrowed and sometimes ten feet in 

 length, was for a long time called the horn of the Unicorn.(a) This 

 animal has, it is true, the germs of two tusks, but it is very seldom 

 that both become equally developed. That of the left side usually 

 attains its full growth, while the other remains hidden in its alveolus.f 

 According to the description of the Narwhal, it is hardly more than 

 twice or thrice the length of its tusk; Ihe skin is marbled with 

 brown and a kind of white; the muzzle is arched; mouth small; 

 spiracle on the top of the head, and no dorsal fin, but merely a salient 

 crest along the whole length of the spine. The tusks are some- 

 times found perfectly smooth.]; 

 The other Cetacea have the head so large as to constitute one third or 

 one half of the length of the whole body) but neither the cranium nor 

 the brain participate in this disproportion, which is altogether owing to an 

 enormous development of the bones of the face. 



Physeter, Lin. 



The Cachalots, § or Spermaceti Wliales, are Cetacea with a very vo- 

 luminous head, excessively enlarged, particularly in front, in w^hose upper 



* The Narval microcephale, Lacep. pi. v. f, 2, is nothing more than a common 

 Narwhal, not quite so badly figured as in pi. iv. f. 3, which is copied from a bad 

 drawing of Klein, Pise, per Pulm. Resp. pi. ii. fig. c, from an individual captured in 

 the Elbe in 1736, afterwards stuflfed and exhibited in Dresden. Anderson gives a 

 rather better figure of the same individual. Fr. Tr. II. p. 108. 



t We have found this small tusk in several crania, and verified the statements of 

 Anderson on this subject. It is prevented from being developed by its internal cavity 

 becoming too rapidly filled with the matter of the ivory, which thus obliterates its 

 gelatinous core. 



X The Monodon spurhis of Fabricius, or Anarlcalc of Greenland, (Ancylodon Illi- 

 ger) which has but two small curved teeth in the upper jaw and a dorsal fin, cannot 

 be far removed from the Hyperoodon. Val, wale, in all the languages derived from 

 the Teutonic, signifies Whale, and is often employed for the Cetacea in general; 

 nar, in the language of the Icelanders, means cadaver, or dead body, and it is 

 pretended that such is the food of this genus. 



§ Physeter as well as physalus, signifies blower. Cachalot is the name used by the 

 Biscayans ; from cachau, which in the Cantabrian dialect means tooth. 



|^° («) Our sailors still call the Narwhal the Sea Unicorn; it yields merely 

 three tuns of oil, and is not pursued on this account. — Eng. Ed. 



J^W («) The Cachalots are with the Greenland Whales {B. mysticetus), the only 

 Whales which are pursued by the Whale-fishers: they are gregarious, and live in 

 groups of no less than two hundred, consisting of females guided by a male. The 

 quantity of oil yielded by the Cachalot is as small as three tuns, and would be 

 deemed unworthy of the trouble required in catching it, were it not in the first place 



