138 GREENLAND VOYAGE. 
smooth-mouthed animal, without teeth to detain 
and crush it, or any apparent means of compress¬ 
ing it. 
The occasional capture of the narwal, on this 
and a former voyage, afforded me some new facts 
in their natural history and anatomy, which it 
may not he out of place to insert here. 
The following description, as far as dimensions 
are concerned, refers to a male narwal of fourteen 
feet in length, exclusive of the horn. In other 
respects, these particulars, with a very few ex¬ 
ceptions, would equally apply to all the males of 
the same species. 
The colour of the skin was white, or yellowish- 
white, with patches and irregular spots of grey 
and brownish black. In younger animals, the 
white is less predominant. In one of the same 
sex, 10 feet 8 inches long, with an external horn 
of 19 inches, the colour was much darker ; the 
back, liead, and part of the sides, being black, 
and the rest of the body speckled with grey or 
white; but no part entirely white. The open¬ 
ing of the ear was six inches behind the eye, on 
the same horizontal line. Its diameter was not 
greater than that of a small knitting-wire. The 
eyes were fifteen inches distant from the snout. 
The fin, which in the common whale is flat, is 
