108 MARINE 3IA3I3IALS OF THE NORTH-WESTERN COAST. 



across the tail ; the ridges of the tail run the same way along the body, and form 

 ridges on the sides of the rump. The back appears depressed and flat, three or 

 four feet posterior to the neck. The head forms about one -seventh of the whole 

 length of the animal, being small, blunt, and round. The mouth is small and 

 incapable of much extension, having a wedge-shaped under lip. The eyes are only 

 one inch in their largest diameter, and are placed on a line with the opening of 

 the mouth at about thirteen inches from the snout. The opening of the ear, 

 situated six inches behind the eye on the same horizontal line, is of the diameter 

 of a small knitting-needle. The spiracle, or blow- hole, is situated immediately over 

 the eyes, and is a singular semicircular opening about three and one -half inches in 

 diameter, and one inch and a half in length. The fins are twelve or fourteen 

 inches long, and six or eight broad, and placed at one -fifth of the length of the 

 animal from the snout. Where fixed to the body, the fin is elliptical. In the adult 

 Narwhal, the ground is wholly white, with dark -gray or blackish spots. These 

 spots are of a roundish or oblong form ; on the back, where they seldom exceed 

 two inches in diameter, they are the darkest and most crowded together. On the 

 sides these spots are fainter, smaller, and more open. On the belly they are 

 extremely faint and few. A close patch of brownish -black, without any white, is 

 often found on the upper part of the neck, just behind the blow- hole. The sucker 

 Narwhals are almost uniformly of a bluish -gray, or slate color. Very old individ- 

 uals become almost white. The remarkable peculiarity of the Narwhal is its long, 

 spiral, ivory tusk, which grows from the left side of the inferior portion of the 

 upper jaw, sometimes to the length of ten feet or more. This tusk is generally 

 covered with a dark, greasy incrustation above, while below and at the point it is 

 kept white by use. In addition to this external tusk, peculiar to the male, there 

 is another on the right side of the head, about nine inches long, imbedded in the 

 skull. In females, as well as in young males, in which the tooth does not appear 

 externally, the rudiments of two tusks are generally found in the upper jaw."* 



The food of the Narwhal is said to consist of molluscous animals, and some- 

 times fish, although the creature is destitute of teeth exclusive of its tusks. The 

 Narwhal is considered a harmless animal, but active and possessed of considerable 

 swiftness; yet, when on the surface of the water for the purpose of respiration, it 



* Scoresby, in his Greenland voyage, killed a of conical form and obliquely truncated at the 



female Narwhal having an external horn four thickest end, and without the knot formed in 



feet three inches long, twelve inches of which many of the milk -tusks. The horn was on the 



were imbedded in the skull. It had also, as left side of the head, and the spiral was dex- 



usual, a milk -tusk nine inches long, which was trorsal. 



