ORDER OP CETACEA. 81 



ordinary life of the animal, useful to it for its respiration, its nutri- 

 tion, and, at the same time, an offensive and defensive weapon. 



Narwhals are not always brutal and warlike. Scoresby saw 

 some very merry bands of these marine animals ; they raised their 

 horns and crossed them, as if they were going to fence, and they 

 followed the ship with a sort of wild curiosity. 



The ivory of the Narwhal's tusk is an object of great value, for 

 it is more compact, harder, and susceptible of a finer polish than 

 that of the Elephant. It is on this account that visitors to the 

 library of Versailles are shown a walking-stick made of narwhal 

 ivory inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Of this ivory is made the 

 throne of the kings of Denmark, which was to be seen, and which 

 is, perhaps, to be seen still, in the Castle of Rosenberg. 



A most excellent observer, Mr. R. Brown, remarks that " the 

 Narwhal is gregarious, generally travelling in great herds. I 

 have seen," he relates, "a herd of many thousands travelling north 

 in their summer migrations, tusk to tusk and tail to tail, like a 

 regiment of cavalry, so regidarly did they seem to rise and sink 

 into the water in their undulatory movements in swimming. It 

 is very active, and will often dive with the rapidity of the Right 

 Whale, taking out thirty or forty fathoms of line. These ' schides ' 

 are not all of one sex, as stated by Scoresby, but consist of males 

 and females mixed. The use of the tusk has long been a matter 

 of dispute : it has been supposed to use it to stir up its food from 

 the bottom ; but if such were the case the females would be sadly at 

 a loss. They seem to fight with them ; for it is rarely that an 

 unbroken one is obtained, and occasionally one may be found with 

 the point of another jammed into the broken place, where the tusk 

 is young enough to be hollow, or entirely lost close to the skull. 

 Fabricius thought that this protuberance was to keep the holes open 

 in the ice during the winter ; and the following occurrence seems 

 to support his view. In April, 18C0, a Greenlander was travel- 

 ling along the ice in the vicinity of Christianshaab, and discovered 

 one of those open places in the ice which, even in the most severe 

 winters, remain free of ice. In this hole htmdreds of Narwhals and 

 Belugas were protruding their heads to breathe, no other open spot 

 presenting itself for miles around. It was described to me as akin 

 to an arctic Black Hole in Calcutta, from the crowding of the 

 Narwhals in their eagerness to keep to the place. Hundreds of 



a 



