T/siiES. 477 • 



long. In all the variety of weapons with which Nature has 

 armed her various tribes, there is not one so large or so formi- 

 dable as this. This terrible weapon is generally found single, 

 and some are of opinion that the animal is furnished but with 

 one by nature ; but there is at present the skull of a narwhal at 

 the ytadthouse at Amsterdam, with two teeth ; which plainly 

 jjroves that in some animals, at least, this instrument is double. 

 It is even a doubt whether it may not be so in all ; and that the 

 narwhal's wanting a tooth is only an accident which it has met 

 with in the encounters it is obliged daily to be engaged in. Yet 

 it must be owned, of those that are taken only with one tooth, 

 there seems no socket, nor no remains of any other upon the op- 

 posite side of the jaw, but all is plain and even. Hosvcver this 

 be, the tooth, or, as some are pleased to call it, the horn of the 

 narwhal, is the most terrible of all natural instruments of destruc- 

 tion. It is as straight as an arrow, about the thickness of the 

 small of a man's leg, wreathed in the manner we sometimes see 

 twisted bars of iron ; it tapers to a sharp point ; and is whiter, 

 heavier and harder, than ivory. It is generally seen to spring from 

 the left side of the head directly forward in a straight line with 

 the body ; and its root enters into the socket above a foot and 

 a half. In a skull to be seen at Hamburgh there are two teeth, 

 which are each above seven feet long, and are eight inches in 

 circumference. When the animal, possessed of these formidable 

 weapons, is urged to employ them, it drives directly forward 

 against the enemy with its teeth, that, like protended spears, 

 pierce whatever stands before them. 



The extreme length of these instruments has induced some 

 to consider them rather as horns than teeth ; but they in every 

 respect resemble the tusks of the boar and the elephant. They 

 grow, as in them, from sockets in the upper jaw ; they have the 

 solidity of the hardest bone, and far surpass ivory in all its 

 qualities. The same error has led others to suppose, that as 

 among quadrupeds the female was often found without horns, so 

 these instruments of defence were only to be found in the male: 

 but this has been more than once refuted by actual experience ; 

 both sexes are found armed in this manner ; the horn is some- 

 times found wreathed, and sometimes smooth ; somctin)es a little 

 bent, and sometimes straight ; but always strong, dccjily fixed, 

 tttid sharply pointed. 



