70 The Rorquals 



the blood was spirting in jets. Immediately the whole 

 school would close in upon him, rending him with their 

 keenly armed jaws until in a few moments there was 

 no trace of him to be seen ; the disrobed skeleton had 

 sunk, to be finally polished by the minute scavengers 

 of the sea ere its deposit on the silent mysterious floor 

 of the ocean. 



They are of little value commercially, owing to the 

 small amount of blubber they carry, although there is 

 a legend among whalemen of the oil from the Porpoise's 

 jaw being worth a guinea an ounce for watchmakers' 

 use. But I do not know how far this is justified — I 

 should say it was just a yam. They used to be valued 

 as food, but now I do not think anybody but sailors 

 would eat them, and sailors only in the absence of 

 anything more palatable. Their flesh is like very dark, 

 fine-grained beef with a strong flavour of fish. 



The strangest member of the Dolphin family is 

 undoubtedly the Narwhal, that curious cetacean which 

 has one or two teeth so abnormally developed that they 

 have been utilised for bedposts ; most people have seen 

 pictures of this bizarre-looking whale, with the long 

 twisted yellow horn of ivory sticking straight out from 

 his nose. There is very good reason to suppose that 

 the idea of the unicorn as shown in our royal arms may 

 have been taken from this extraordinary Dolphin ; 

 much more reasonable one would think than that it 

 should have been taken from the ungainly rhinoceros. 

 It is restricted in its habitat to the Arctic regions, and 

 is supposed by a great many of the natives to be the 

 male of the Beluga, or white whale, a supposition which 

 is worthy of some credit, owing to the similarity of 

 structure, other than the horn, between them. Only 

 the Beluga does not confine itself to feeding in the sea, 

 but on the Alaskan coast pursues the salmon far up 



