1871] MR. J. W. CLARK ON THE NARWHAL. 45 



favour of this view ; for he says, in his ' Fauna Grcenlandica*, " De 

 maxilla superiore, latere alterutro, jam dextro, jam sinistro, prostat 

 dens prselongus." That he should have made such a mistake is 

 ingeniously accounted for by Reinhardt, who argues that, as Fabri- 

 cius resided in the south of Greenland, at Narksalik in Frederikshaab 

 district, whereas the Narwhal rarely appears south of the 65 th pa- 

 rallel, it is highly probable that he never saw one alive, or even a 

 skull, the tusk being the only part of the animal that was preserved 

 in those days. 



The statement of Fabricius is, so far as I know, utterly unsup- 

 ported. I have never seen a Narwhal skull with a tusk on the right 

 side, nor heard of a single well accredited instance of such a skull 

 having been seen by others. One instance alone is mentioned in the 

 whole literature of the subject ; and that, though resting on the testi- 

 mony of Pallas, must be received with caution. He statesf that he 

 saw at the British Museum in London a Narwhal skeleton, 1 2' long, 

 with a tusk, 4' in length, on the right side of the skull. Pallas is 

 generally so accurate, and in this particular case is so precise in giving 

 the measurements of the specimen referred to, that one cannot help 

 feeling sure that he is writing from notes and not from memory. 

 Otherwise the length of time, nearly fifty years J, that intervened 

 between his visit to London and the publication of the ' Zoographia,' 

 coupled with the fact that the specimen cannot now be found, and 

 that no record has been preserved of its existence, would suggest 

 that a mistake had been made. As the case stands I confess that I 

 feel disposed to accept Pallas's statement as accurate, and to regard 

 the remarkable specimen he saw as a unique divergence from the rule. 

 On the other hand, Scoresby § never saw a tusk on the right side of 

 the head ; and Reinhardt ||, who in his position at Copenhagen has 

 had singular opportunities of studying the Cetacea, says that during 

 the past thirty years he has examined as many Narwhal skulls, and 

 never found a tusk on the right side. 



I may take this opportunity of correcting a statement of Owen's, 

 which at first sight would seem to favour the existence of a tooth on 

 the right side. In his description of a Narwhal skull in the Hun- 

 terian Collection, No. 2525, he remarks, " The left tusk is, iu this 

 instance, abortive," implying that the right is developed ^[. On re- 

 ference to the skull, however, it appears that he has mistaken the 

 right side for the left, as so many of his predecessors have done ; for 

 it is perfectly normal in all respects. 



Although there is no evidence in support of the development of a 



* Ed. 1780, p. 30. 



t "In alio sceleto, quod Museum Britannicum habet, duodecimpedali, den- 

 tem unieum quadripedalem in dextro alveolo, alterum alveolum plane oblittera- 

 tum vidi." (Zoographia Rosso-Asiatica, i. p. 29(1.) 



I Pallas visited London, according to Prof. Keinhardt, in 1761. The 'Zoo- 

 graphia' was published in 1811. 



§ Arctic Regions, i. p. 490. 



|| Reinhardt, I. c. 



^[ Cat. Mus. Roy. Coll. Surg. (Osteology), ii. p. 185. The error was pointed 

 out to me bv Prof. Flower. 



