164 THE OCEAN. 
man, “that the Narwhal, an animal without teeth, 
a small mouth, and with stiff lips, should be able 
to catch and swallow so large a fish as a skate, 
the breadth of which is nearly three times as great 
as the width of its own mouth. It seems probable 
that the skates had been pierced with the horn, and 
killed before they were devoured; otherwise it is 
difficult to imagine how the Narwhal could have 
swallowed them, or how a fish of any activity would 
have permitted itself to be taken, and sucked down 
the throat of a smooth-mouthed animal, without 
teeth to detain and compress it.” 
We know but little of the true fishes that inhabit 
tha Arctic Seas. It appears, however, that many of the 
more important of those which are common with us, 
are common also there; not the subjects of an annual 
migration, but widely distributed at all times. On 
the authority of a French naval officer, it would even 
seem that some species at least may undergo a sort 
of torpidity. “ Admiral Pleville Lepley, who had 
had his home on the ocean for half a century, as- 
sured M. Lacepéde that in Greenland, in the smaller 
bays surrounded with rock, so common on this coast, . 
where the water is always calm, and the bottom 
generally soft mud and juice, he had seen in the 
beginning of spring myriads of Mackerel, with their 
heads sunk some inches in the mud, their tails ele- 
vated vertically above its level; and that the mass 
of fish was such, that at a distance it might be taken 
for a reef of rocks. The Admiral supposed that the 
Mackerel had passed the winter torpid, under the ice 
and snow, and added that, for fifteen or twenty days 
