SEALS AAW WHALES OF THE BRLTLSH SEAS. 107 



are generally asymmetrical, being twisted more or less, usually towards the 

 left. This peculiarity is especially observable in Monodon. One would 

 expect it to be greatly exaggerated in the skulls of the males, where the 

 left tusk alone is developed, and the left maxillary is, in consequence, very 

 large, and the right proportionately small ; but it does not seem to be affected 

 by the absence or presence of the teeth. Female skulls, where neither tusk 

 is developed, are equally twisted, and so are the bidental skulls .... the 

 increased size of the right maxillary docs not appear to affect the rest of 

 the skull." 



Mr. Clark enumerates eleven skulls of the Narwhal in which both tusks 

 are developed ; four at Copenhagen, and one each in the museum of Hamburg, 

 Christiania, Amsterdam, Weimar, Hull, Paris, and Cambridge; to these must 

 be added a twelfth, which was brought from Prince Regent's Inlet, by Capt. 

 Gravill, of the " Camperdown," and is now in the Dundee Museum. 



Not long since I saw preserved in a country mansion, the tusk of a 

 Narwhal measuring 7 ft. 5 in. long ; it was carefully kept in a long case 

 resembling a barber's pole, and bore a ticket attached, which stated that it 



was "Bequeathed in 1 561 by the Countess of , to her daughter 



." No doubt at the time this formed a valuable bequest, as even 



royal and ecclesiastical dignitaries are said to have esteemed these strange 

 objects (probably associated with the mythical unicorn), as " good against " 

 poisons and fevers, and prized them accordingly. The use of this remarkable 

 appendage appears very doubtful ; it has been conjectured that it serves to 

 stir up food from the bottom of the sea, in which case the female would be 

 badly off without it ; or that it is employed to keep breathing-holes open in 

 the ice, and an instance is related in support of this view, in which hundreds 

 were seen at an ice-hole protruding their heads to breathe, but it is not clear 

 whether they made the hole for themselves, or whether they were attracted by 

 it, particularly as there were numbers of White Whales with them. It seems 



