DOLPHINS, PORPOISES 



superstitions circled round this tooth or tusk in ancient 

 and mediaeval days, the chief among them being that it 

 was an antidote against all poisons. Even as far down as 

 the sixteenth century we find Charles IX of France be- 

 lieving that a fragment of the tooth put into his wine- 

 cup would counteract the effect of any poison that an 

 enemy might have placed there. Later all sorts of 

 squabbles arose among naturalists as to the use that the 

 tusk is to the animal ; some still maintain that it is 

 employed solely in burrowing for molluscs which, with 

 skate, cod, and squid, are its food ; and that its having 

 been found in a dead whale or a ship's timbers is pure 

 accident. 



The Icelanders strip off the hide and employ it in 

 various ways, and export the oil from the fat ; this is 

 said to be of better quality than that from whale- 

 blubber. But they do not eat the flesh. The word 

 "nar" in Icelandic signifies a corpse; and the natives 

 argue that an animal does not get called " corpse- whale " 

 for nothing ; and they abstain. In that respect they are a 

 good deal more particular than some more civilised folk 

 who will enjoy crabs and eels which undoubtedly have a 

 partiality for the form of diet which the narwhal is un- 

 justly accused of relishing. 



As the weather gets warmer the shoals swim north- 

 wards to the Greenland coast, sometimes in the straggling 

 files already described, sometimes " shoulder to shoulder," 

 in one line a couple of miles long. They stay here till 

 driven southwards by scarcity of food, but often a small 

 shoal will be cut off by the sudden* winter and frozen up. 



276 



