574 



THE WHALES. 



dovvn with seeming greatest regularity, pursuing 

 their course in wavy lines. Such schools are not 

 always composed of individuals of the same sex, 

 but consist of males and females mixed." 

 Disposition, Food Modern seafarers describe this Whale 



and Foes of the as a very lively, agile animal, which 

 Narwhal. gives the sea an aspect of animation 

 by reason of its extraordinary speed and repeated 

 divings and reappearances, and enchains the atten- 

 tion of the observer. It certainly does not wage 

 such bloody wars with other Whales as have been 

 fabled, and it lives on amicable terms with its own 

 kind. 



Sea cucumbers, mollusks and fish form the food 

 of this notable creature. 



Manifold dangers and many foes menace the life 

 of the Narwhal. Of no other Whale does one find 

 so many remains as of this on6. Winter, which 

 often arrives with surprising abruptness, binding the 

 seas of the high north in fetters of ice, endangers 

 and renders difficult the existence of all air-breath- 

 ing marine animals, puts an end to the lives of hun- 

 dreds and thousands of this species, and when the 



than they are now, for we see in them only an ivory- 

 like masg. About one hundred and fifty years ago 

 there were still very few Narwhals' tusks in Europe 

 and those that seafarers chanced to find met with a 

 ready sale. They were held to be the horns of the 

 Unicorn of the Bible, and that is why Englishmen 

 place this member on the fabulous Unicorn of their 

 national coat- of -arms. Emperors and kings had 

 them made into rods, adorned with the daintiest 

 carvings, for the purpose of being carried behind 

 these monarchs on state occasions, and valuable 

 crosiers for bishops were also manufactured out of 

 them. As late as the sixteenth century four Nar- 

 whals' tusks were preserved in the Baireuth museum 

 on the Plassenburg as extraordinary curiosities. One 

 of them had been accepted by two margraves of 

 Baireuth as payment of a debt owed by King Charles 

 V, and for the larger one. the Venetians offered the 

 enormous sum of 30,000 sequins, as late as 1559, with- 

 out succeeding, however, in obtaining possession of 

 it. One tusk, which was suspended by a golden 

 chain in the electoral collection of Dresden, was 

 valued at g 100,000. 



THE SOOSOO. With a long, slender body ending in a forked tail at one end and a long beak in another, the Soosoc is one of the stran- 

 gest members of the Dolphin family. It is found in the Ganges and other principal rivers of India, where it lives on fish. (Platanista gangetica.) 



ice fields break the sea washes their dead bodies 

 or fragmentary remains ashore. Small parasites 

 torment the Narwhal, large enemies menace it, and 

 Man in many localities also pursues it. Some are 

 harpooned in the high seas; on the whole, however, 

 the extent of the chase is nowhere considerable, the 

 results therefrom not being remunerative according 

 to the European or American standard of profitable 

 adventure. Flesh and oil are equally esteemed. 

 When the Danish ladies living in Greenland bring 

 the flesh on the table, boiled or fried and served in 

 the jelly made of the fat skin of the same animal, 

 they are filled with the consciousness that the most 

 fastidious foreigner will soon learn to appreciate the 

 dish. Native Greenlanders eat the flesh boiled and 

 dried, the skin and blubber raw; they burn the oil in 

 lamps, make thread out of the sinews and air-bag 

 floats out of the stomach, which they use in fishing; 

 they even know how to put the intestines to account. 

 Tushs and Teeth of In former times very large sums 

 the Narwhal Highly were paid for the tusks. All kinds 

 Valued. of occult powers were ascribed to 



them, and they were put to far more varied uses 



^be 36ottlc*=mo0e& Mbales. 



FIFTH FAMILY: Hyperoodontid^. 



For the sake of completeness I will briefly men- 

 tion the third family of the suborder, which com- 

 prises the Bottle-nosed Whales {Hyperoodontidm) and 

 is represented by several species, chiefly in southern 

 seas. The Whales belonging to this family differ 

 from the Dolphins as much by the snout which is 

 prolonged into a more or less beak-like formation as 

 by the dentition, the peculiarity of which is that 

 the lower jaw has on each side only one or two 

 developed teeth, and besides them, if any at all, but 

 few rudimentary ones, which do not project beyond 

 the gums. 



Characteristics and One of the better-known members 

 Habitat of the Bot- of this family is the Bottle-nosed 

 tIe.Nosed Dolphin. Dolphin {Hyperoodon bidens) a stur- 

 dily framed Whale ranging in length between twenty 

 feet and twenty-six feet eight inches. The snout is 

 prolonged like a beak and protrudes to the extent of 

 from twelve to twenty-four mches; a short but deep 

 fold of skin extends from the middle of the lower 



