THE NARWHAL. 



573 



cated only by an elevated, fatty skin, the color is 

 grayish black above, grayish white beneath. 



This remarkable Dolphin, which, however, recent 

 investigations have shown to be bv no means the 

 only representative of the order living in the rivers 

 of southeastern Asia, exists not only in the Ganges 

 and its tributaries, but has also been found in the 

 Brahmaputra and the Indus. The food of this spe- 

 cies consists chiefly of fish and Shrimps; occasion- 

 ally grains of rice and remains of insects are also 

 found in its stomach, but they are said to come from 

 the intestines of fish it has devoured. 



Z\iz marwbal. 



FOURTH FAniLY: Monodontid^. 



Important distinctions separate the Narwhal or 

 Sea Unicorn {Monodon mo/ioceros), the representative 

 of the genus of the same name, so widely from the 



behind. The tail-fin is very large and branches into 

 two large flukes. The hue of the shining, soft, 

 velvety skin seems to be subject to considerable 

 modifications according to the sex and age. In the 

 male the white or yellowish white ground color is 

 diversified with numerous, irregularly shaped, dark 

 brown spots set closest together on the back, widest 

 apart on the abdomen, and merging into one an- 

 other on the head; young animals are darker than 

 old ones. There are also nearly purely white and 

 grayish, unmarked individuals. The total length of 

 the Narwhal is said to sometimes be as great as 

 twenty feet, not averaging, however, more than from 

 thirteen to sixteen and one-half feet. 

 Superstitions and We must not be astonished at the 

 Facts Concerning fact that marvelous stories concern- 

 the Narwhal. [^g the Narwhal were rife among 

 our ancestors. An animal so remarkable in shape 

 necessarily arouses the wonder of mankind, and so 

 long as science had not yet spoken a decisive word, 

 there was food for imagination. The tusk especially 



THE INIA. This animal, sometimes called the Bonto, is quite common in the larger rivers of South America. Its muzzle is elongated 



into a beak and its flippers are long. It is especially prominent in the Amazon and Orinoco Rivers. Its movements in the water are quite 

 lively. It lives on fish and is very voracious, i/nia amazonica.') 



other Toothed Whales that a distinct family has 

 been based on the animal. The dentition differs 

 from that of all other Whales in the development of 

 two enormous tusks, which are from six and one- 

 half to ten feet long, comparatively weak, twisted 

 from right to left, hollowed inwardly and projected 

 horizontally from the upper jaw. The right tusk is 

 stunted as a rule, and in the female both tusks attain 

 but a limited development. There are two small 

 incisors and one molar besides, in the upper jaw, but 

 they are invariably found only in young animals. 

 The cylindrical head is rounded in front and occu- 

 pies about one-seventh of the total length of the 

 elongated, spindle-shaped body; the snout is very 

 short, broad, thick, somewhat shortened on the right 

 side and is not differentiated by any line of demar- 

 cation, from the flat forehead, but is abruptly trun- 

 cated, being cut off almost perpendicularly in front. 

 There is no fin on the back, its place being supplied 

 by a. fold of skin. The pectoral fins are situated in 

 about the first fifth of the length of the body. They 

 are short, of oval outline and thicker in front than 



has given rise to manifold conjectures. Albertus 

 Magnus speaks of this animal as a fish, which has 

 a horn on its forehead, with which it can pierce 

 fish and frail ships, but says it is very slow in its 

 movements, and the objects of its attacks can eas- 

 ily escape. On our part we regard this tusk as a 

 weapon, such as is often given the male sex alone. 



The Narwhal is an inhabitant of the northern seas 

 and is oftenest found between the seventieth and 

 eightieth parallels of north latitude. It is plentiful 

 in Davis' Straits and Baffin's Bay, in the Arctic 

 Ocean between Greenland and Iceland, around 

 Nova Zembla and farther in the north Siberian seas, 

 and it is rare south of the Arctic Circle. In its 

 native latitudes it is nearly always seen in schools 

 containing large numbers, for in point of gregari- 

 ousness it is inferior to none of its relatives. "Dur- 

 ing its migrations," says Brown, " I have seen schools 

 numbering many thousands. With tusks and tails 

 aligned, they swam beside each other, going north, 

 their movements recalling to the mind of the ob- 

 server those of a cavalry regiment; bobbing up and 



