86 F, BROWN ON THE CETACEA OF GREENLAND. 



have very similar names (Agluck, fide Pallas, Zool. Rosso- Asiat. 

 p. 305 ; and Aguluck, fide Chamisso, Nov. Act. Acad. Nat. Cur. 

 vol. xii. p. 262) for animals closely allied to, if not identical with, 

 this species. 



The Ardluk is only seen in the summer time along the whole 

 coast of Greenland. Wherever the White Whale, the Right 

 Whale, or the Seals are found, there is also their ruthless enemy 

 the Killer. The White Whale and Seals often run ashore in 

 terror of this Cetacean ; and I have seen Seals spring out of the 

 water when pursued by it. The whalers hate to see it, for its 

 arrival is the signal for every Whale to leave that portion of the 

 sea. It is said that it will not go among ice, and that the Right 

 Whale, when attacked by it, keeps among ice to escape its perse- 

 cution. Occasionally the ends of the laminae of whalebone are 

 found bitten off, apparently by the Killer ; and probably this is 

 the origin of the story that it preys on the tongue of the whale. 

 Linne* very happily styles it " Balsenarum phocarumque tyrannusf 

 " quas turmatim aggreditur." Though subsisting chiefly on large 

 fishes, they will not hesitate to attack the largest Whalebone 

 Whales, and are able to swallow whole large Porpoises and Seals. 

 Dr. Eschricht took out of the stomach of one thirteen Porpoises 

 and fourteen Seals, the voracious animal having been choked by 

 the skin of a fifteenth. It has been known to swallow four Seals 

 at least immediately one after the other, and in the course of a few 

 days as many as twenty-seven individuals.^ I know of a case in 

 which they attacked a white-painted herring boat in the Western 

 Islands, probably mistaking it for a Beluga ! IlolboU once wit- 

 nessed a herd of White Whales, driven into a boy near Godhavn, 

 literally torn to pieces by these voracious sea-wolves. 



11. Phoc^ena communis, Brookes. 



Popular names. — Purpess, Sea-pig (English seamen) ; Mar- 

 suin,^ Herring -hogs, Pelloch, Bucker, Puffy- dunter, JVeesock^ 

 (fishermen of Northern Islands and coasts of Scotland) ; Nesa or 

 JVisa and, more rarely, Piglertok (Greenlanders). 



The Porpoise arrives in the spring in Davis Strait, and stops 

 there until November, but does not go further north than from 



* Mant. Plant., vol. ii., p. 523. 



f Gunnerus (Trondh. Selski Skriv. iv. p. 99) styles it Kobheherre — Lord 

 of the seals. 



. X Nilsson, Skand. Fauna (Daggdjuren), p. 607. 



^, § The old Norsemen as they poured forth from Scandinavia on their pre- 

 datory or colonizing expeditions leavened not only the habits but the language 

 of the conquered. Marsvin is the Swedish word for the Porpoise, hence the 

 French Marsouin and the same Shetland word. Nise (meaning sprite or 

 goblin) is the Norse term for it, hence we have Nisa in Greenland and 

 Neesock in Shetland (the ock being used there, as in many other words, as 

 a diminutive). Porpoise is only a corruption of the French pore poisson, 

 w^hich we have almost literally translated into Sea-pig. So is the German 

 Meerschwein identical in origin with the Norse Marsouin, also meaning 

 •* Sea-pig." 



