DOLPHINS, PORPOISES 



Though the animal is so valuable, there is little system- 

 atic porpoise-hunting nowadays except among the Lapps 

 and Greenlanders. If a whaleboat should happen to fall 

 in with a shoal, it will harpoon as many of them as it can 

 without going out of its way, and the Norwegian fisher- 

 men will shoot or spear them in the same spirit in which 

 a gamekeeper sends a charge of shot after a stray dog or 

 a weasel. But in the Middle Ages porpoise-hunting was a 

 fashionable sport in England and France : the meat was 

 highly esteemed, and in Henry VIIFs time it was even a 

 royal dish. The Greenlanders still eat and enjoy it ; 

 they hunt it with light harpoons, and the catches are 

 towed ashore in great quantities. 



The oil, which the Greenland fishers export to Central 

 Europe, is obtained from the boiling down of the blubber, 

 which, as in the whale, lies immediately below the skin. 

 It is firmer than that of the whale, and usually about an 

 inch deep, and the oil from it requires less treatment in 

 the clarifying of it than any other form of cetacean fat. 

 The hide when tanned is exceedingly tough, and is used 

 largely in making hoods for carriages. 



The narwhal, or sea-unicorn as it is often called, has a 

 dolphin's body, but its head is shaped more like that of a 

 seal ; the blow-holes, as in the dolphin, have but one out- 

 let. The chief feature which distinguishes it from all the 

 other cetacea is its wonderful sword-like tusk, which in 

 reality is an elongated tooth, sometimes more than half as 

 long as its body (the tusk of the female is seldom more 

 than ten inches long). Sea-unicorn, by the way, is rather 

 a misleading nickname, for very frequently the animal 



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