188 MAMMALIA. 
Monopon, Lin. 
The Narwhals have no teeth properly speaking, but mere long, straight 
and pointed tusks, implanted in the intermaxillary bone; and directed in 
the line of the axis of the body. The form of their body and that of 
their head greatly resemble that of the Porpoises. One species only is 
well known, the 
M. monoceros, L.; Scoresby, Arct. Reg. pl. xv.* (The Nar- 
whal). Whose tusk is spirally furrowed and sometimes ten feet in 
length, was for a long time called the horn of the Unicorn.(a) This 
animal has, it is true, the germs of two tusks, but it is very seldom 
that both become equally developed. That of the left side usually 
attains its full growth, while the other remains hidden in its alveolus. + 
According to the description of the Narwhal, it is hardly more than 
twice or thrice the length of its tusk; the skin is marbled with 
brown and a kind of white; the muzzle is arched; mouth small; 
spiracle on the top of the head, and no dorsal fin, but merely a salient 
crest along the whole length of the spine. The tusks are some- 
times found perfectly smooth, 
The other Cetacea have the head so large as to constitute one third or 
one half of the length of the whole body) but neither the cranium nor 
the brain participate in this disproportion, which is altogether owing to an 
enormous development of the bones of the face. 
PuysetTer, Lin. 
The Cachalots,§ or Spermaceti Whales, are Cetacea with a very vo- 
luminous head, excessively enlarged, particularly in front, in whose upper 
* The Narval microcephale, Lacep. pl. vy. f. 2, is nothing more than a common 
Narwhal, not quite so badly figured as in pl. iv. f. 8, which is copied from a bad 
drawing of Klein, Pise. per Pulm. Resp. pl. ii. fig. c, from an individual captured in 
the Elbe in 1736, afterwards stuffed and exhibited in Dresden. Anderson gives a 
rather better figure of the same individual. Fr. Tr. Il. p. 108. 
+ We have found this small tusk in several crania, and verified the statements of 
Anderson on this subject. It is prevented from being developed by its internal cavity 
becoming too rapidly filled with the matter of the ivory, which thus obliterates its 
gelatinous core. 
} The Monodon spurius of Fabricius, or Anarkak of Greenland, (4ncylodon Mli- 
ger) which has but two small curved teeth in the upper jaw and a dorsal fin, cannot 
be far removed from the Hyperoodon. Vai, wale, in all the languages derived from 
the Teutonic, signifies Whale, and is often employed for the Cetacea in general; 
nar, in the language of the Icelanders, means cadaver, or dead body, and it is 
pretended that such is the food of this genus. 
§ Physeter as well as physalus, signifies blower. Cachalot is the name used by the 
Biscayans; from cachau, which in the Cantabrian dialect means tooth. 
K@S (a) Our sailors still call the Narwhal the Sea Unicorn; it yields merely 
three tuns of oil, and is not pursued on this account.—En«. Ep. 
KS° (a) The Cachalots are with the Greenland Whales (B. mysticetus), the only 
Whales which are pursued by the Whale-fishers: they are gregarious, and live in 
groups of no less than two hundred, consisting of females guided by a male. The 
quantity of oil yielded by the Cachalot is as small as three tuns, and would be 
deemed unworthy of the trouble required in catching it, were it not in the first place 
th a ee 
