DESCllll'TION OF GREENLAND. 199 



tion. 'They have more curiosity than you think/ answered the 

 chancellor ; and he immediately sent for a large dried skull, 

 to which was attached a stump of this kind of horn four feet 

 long. I was delighted to hold in my hand so rare and pre- 

 ciovis a thing, and could not look at it enough, for at first it 

 was out of my power to comprehend Avhat it was. I begged 

 the chancellor to allow me to take it home and consider it 

 more at my leisure, which he Avillingly permitted me to do. 

 I found that this skull bore a correct resemblance to that of 

 a whale, that it had two holes at the top, and that these holes 

 pierced the palate. These were doubtless the tAVO apertures 

 through which the animal threw out the water that it drank. 

 And I may remark, that what they call its horn, was fixed 

 to the left part of the upper jaw. I invited my most intelli- 

 gent friends and the best scholars of my audience, to come 

 and see this rarity in my cabinet. A painter whom I had 

 sent for came, and, in the presence of the assistants, made a 

 drawing of this skull, with the horn just as it was both in 

 shape and size, in order that they might be witnesses that my 

 copy had been taken from a true original. My curiosity did 

 not stop there : having heard that a similar animal had been 

 taken and caught in Iceland, I wrote to the bishop of Hole, 

 named Thorlac Scalonius, who was formerly my pupil at 

 Copenhagen, and begged him, as my friend, to send me the 

 picture of this animal. This he did, at the same time telling 

 me that the Icelanders called it narhiial, signifying a whale 

 which feeds on carcases ; because liual means a whale, and 

 nar, a dead body. It was indeed the portrait of a genuine 

 fish which resembled a whale, and you have my promise to 

 show it you when you return from Christianople, together 

 with that of the skull that I had from the chancellor Fris." 



M. Vormius did not fail, on our return, to fulfil his pro- 

 mise ; and, more than that, was not satisfied that I should 

 see merely the pictures of the fish, but he took me into his 

 cabinet, where I saw upon a table the original skull, with the 



