414 Fishes. 
THE SEA-UNICORN, OR NARWHAL, 
(Monodon monoceros,) 
A marine animal, differing from all the cetacea, to which 
it belongs, in not having any teeth, properly so called, 
and in being armed with a horn of seven or eight feet 
in length, which projects from the head. This horn is 
white, spirally twisted throughout its whole length, 
and tapering to a point : it is harder, whiter, and more 
valuable than the ivory of the elephant, and was for- 
merly in high repute for its supposed medical proper- 
ties : small ones may be sometimes seen set with an 
elegant head as a walking-stick, and large specimens 
have been employed as bed-posts. The animal itself 
is from twenty to forty feet in length, and is occasionally 
found with two horns; indeed, there is always the 
genu of a second horn both in the male and female, 
though it is rarely developed in the former, and never 
in the latter, from which we may conjecture that the 
females trust entirely to the males for their defence, as 
we know is the case with several of the mammalia. 
When there is only one horn, it is always on the left 
side of the head ; and when there are two, the horn on 
the left side is always larger than the other. This 
animal chiefly inhabits the arctic seas, and its food is 
said to consist of the smaller kinds of flat fish and other 
marine animals ; its horn is useful in breaking away 
the ice when it wants to come up to breathe. The 
blubber supplies a small quantity of very fine oil, and 
the Greenlanders are very partial to the flesh. 
