102 



A single skull in the British Museum has enabled Dr. Gray to 

 create the foregoing genus : " It is so distinct, both in the form of the 

 nose of the skull, in the width of the maxillary bones, and more 

 especially in the thickness and convexity of the palate of the front 

 part of the skull, from the species which have hitherto been described, 

 and the differences are BO visible, that Mr. Edward Gerrard selected 

 it as a distinct species, as soon as he saw it." 



C. Long produced spiral tusk in upper jaw of male only. 



Family VIII. MONODONTID^. 1 



"Without dorsal fin ; head short, rounded in front, scarcely beaked ; 

 pectoral fins sub-oval, much longer than broad ; skull very convex, the 

 hinder wing of the cheek-bone bending over the eye-cavity ; blade-bone 

 with large spinal processes ; cervical vertebrae, usually free ; costo- 

 sternal ribs ossified ; teeth few in both jaws, early deciduous, with the 

 exception of one in the left side of the upper jaw of the male, occa- 

 sionally in the female, developed into a very long spiral tusk, projecting 

 forwards in a line with the axis of the body. 



Genus MONODON,' Artedi. 



The characters descriptive of the genus, being the only one of the 

 family, are given above. 



Mr. Mower remarks that the Monodon and Beluga are, in almost 

 every part of their skeleton, nearly identical, and he considers the 

 exceptional dentition of the former as an aberration of secondary impor- 

 tance ; he therefore unites the two genera into a distinct sub-family, 

 placing it next to the Platanistidae. 



MONODON MONOCEROS, 2 Linnaeus. The Narwhal, or Sea Unicorn. 



Synonym Monodon monoceros, Linn., Schreb., Desm., Scoresby, &c. 

 Gray, S. & W. p. 310 ; Suppl. p. 95. 

 Sea Unicorn, Sowerby. 

 Narwhal, Blumenb., Klein. 



The colour of this singular animal is dusky black on the upper sur- 

 face, greyish on the sides and white underneath, variegated at different 

 stages of its existence with more or less darker streaks and patches, 

 disposed more numerously on the sides. The food of the Narwhal 

 consists of cuttle-fish, crustaceans, fish, &c., and Mr. Scoresby records 

 the contents of the stomach of one, killed by his crew ; " they consisted 

 of several half-digested fishes, with others of which only the bones 



1 /j.6vos, one, and oSovs, tooth. 



2 fj.6vos t one, and ittpas, a horn, a tusk. 



