88 K. BROWN ON THE CETACEA OF GREENLAND. 



places in the ice. Its range may be said to be the same as the 

 Narwhal's, and during the summer months corresponds with that 

 of the Right Whale, of which it is looked upon hs the precursor. 

 It wanders, however, further south than the Narwhal, being 

 found as a regular denizen as far south as 63° N. lat., though on 

 the opposite coast it reaches much further south, being quite 

 common in the St. Lawrence River. The Greenlanders during 

 the summer kill great numbers of them, and preserve their oil, 

 and dry their flesh for winter use. Of this animal and the Nar- 

 whal, about 500 are yearly caught; but the majority of this num- 

 ber consists of the White Whale. It feeds on Crustacea, Fish, 

 and Cephalopoda ; but in the stomach is generally found some 

 sand. The Greenlanders often jocularly remark, in reference to 

 this, that the Kelelluak takes in ballast. Great numbers are 

 caught by means of nets at the entrance of fjords and inlets, or 

 in the sounds between islands. The young are darker -coloured 

 than the adult, and can at once be distinguished among the herds 

 of the ordinary waxy white colour. It is said to be rarely seen 

 far from land. The males and females are together in the drove, 

 and not separate, as has been stated. Their blast is not unmusi- 

 cal ; and when under the water they emit a peculiar whistling 

 sound which might be mistaken for the whistle of a bird, and on 

 this account the seamen often call them sea-canaries ! It is rarely 

 that the whalers kill a White Whale, their swiftness and activity 

 giving them more trouble than the oil is Avorth.* They are some- 

 times also called " Sea-pigs," from their resemblance to that 

 animal when tumbling about in the water. 



13. MoNODONf MONOCEROS, Linn. 



(a) Popular names. — Narivhal^ Unicorn, Unie (English 

 whalers) ; Narhval (Scandinavians) ; Tugalik, Kelelluak- Ker- 

 nektoh, or Kernektak (Greenlanders) ; Kelelluak-tuak (Eskimo at 

 Pond's Bay). The word Narwhal is derived from the Gothic, and 

 means the " beaked whale," the prefix wotr signifying beak or snout. 



(jS) Desci'iptive remarks. — The female Narwhal is more spotted 

 than the male. The young is again much darker ; and I have 

 seen individuals which were almost white, like the one Anderson 

 describes as having come ashore at the mouth of the Elbe. In a 

 female killed in Pond's Bay, in August 1861, the stomach was 

 corrugated in complicated folds, as were also the small intestines. 

 It contained Crustaceans, bones of Fish, and an immense quantity 

 of the horny mandibles of some species of Cephalopod (probably 

 Sepia loligo) firmly packed one within the other. In its stomach 

 was a long Lumbricus-\\\iQ worm ; and the cavities behind the 

 palate were filled with froth and an innumerable number of little 

 worms, such as Scoresby describes in his account of the animal. 



* One of the whalers, a few summers ago, killed several hundreds, but this 

 is an almost isolated case. 



t Lamarck subsequently usurped this name for a genus of Pectinohranchiate 

 Mollusca. 



