THE NARWAL.

Ir the torrid regions of the globe present us with the hugest of terrestrial mammalia, the elephant, the hippopotamus, the rhinoceros, and the giraffe; it is amidst the polar seas, where glittering icebergs threaten shipwreck and destruction to the adventurous navigator, and where icefloes stretch for leagues around, that we are to look for the hugest of aquatic mammalia, nay, the hugest of all living things. It is there that the whale, and the finner, and the cachalot plough the waters, dash the billows to foam in their gambols, and plunge into the tranquil depths, many fathoms below the reach of the arctic frost, or the arctic storm. Among these monsters, which revel in their ocean home, the narwal holds a conspicuous place, and is at once to be distinguished from them all, by the long ivory spear which projects, horizontally, from its snout, and constitutes a tremendous weapon, giving to its possessor every advantage in its contests with the whale, or still more formidable cachalot. What, indeed, can resist the shock of such a lance, driven by the whole force and weight of a huge monster, rushing at full speed through the Water? In fact, the rapidity of the narwal, combined with its skill in the use of its weapon, renders the capture of the animal not only difficult, but ex

tremely dangerous. The ribs of the stoutest boat would be as easily transfixed by the dint of the thrust of its spear-like tusk, as if they were made of paper; nay, many are the instances on record in which the animal has driven his weapon deep into the thick sides of a ship, when, fortunately, it has snapt short, and so plugged up the orifice it made. Nor does the narwal hesitate to attack either boats or ships, or the colossal whale, or whatever interferes with him in his wide-spread dominions. Agile, as he is rapid, he attacks and returns to the attack, now on one side, then on the other, with frightful velocity; his levelled spear prevents his enemy from closing in upon him, and thus, beyond the reach of retaliation, he plunges it into the body of his foe. Not only has the tusk of the narwal been found imbedded in the hull of ships, but also deeply fixed in the body of the largest whales, broken off by the violence of the shock. We are informed, indeed, that the whale, mighty as he is, is peculiarly obnoxious to the assaults of the narwal, which, though much smaller than that giant of creation, is much more active and fitted for the combat. Some naturalists have even supposed that there existed a sort of natural antipathy be tween these two animals, a conflict necessarily ensuing wherever they chanced

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to meet, which usually terminated in the death of the whale. Others have conjectured, that the combats, which all agree frequently take place between them, arise from the fondness evinced by the narwal for the tongue of the whale, which forms a favourite article of its food, as it is also of the grampus, which is reported to attack the whale in troops, worry it to death, as a pack of hounds the stag, or other large game, tear out its tongue, and devour it. This may be the case; it appears, however, that small fishes and mollusca constitute the chief portion of the diet of the narwal. We cannot indeed believe that its long term of life is spent in dreadful and incessant contests either with the whale or with other powerful tenants of the same seas. Few animals habitually prey upon any but such as fall easily before them; the tiger strikes down with a blow the antelope, or the horse, or the buffalo; but he interferes not, unless irritated, with the elephant or the rhinoceros: these animals, secure in their bulk, wander unmolested by the most ferocious of terrestrial brutes, through the woods and jungles of their native country. So is it, we have every reason to believe, with the whale; an enfeebled or wounded individual may, indeed, be assaulted by a shoal of grampuses, (animals which attain to the length of 20 or 25 feet,) and perish under their ferocious attack; the narwal may occasionally drive his spear into the side of the whale, and repeat his blows till the waters are dyed with blood, and the mighty beast at last floats dead upon the surface; but we doubt whether such scenes are of every day occurrence. There is, perhaps, less reason to doubt that the whale, when dead, having perished by accident, or in consequence of injuries inflicted by the harpoons of fishermen, affords a welcome meal both to the narwal and other huge carnivora of the deep. Indeed, as the name of the narwal imports, dead or putrid animal bodies are said to be eagerly sought for and devoured, and are regarded as ordinarily constituting a portion of its diet. Nar, in Icelandish, signifies, we are informed, a dead body or carcase; and wal, wale, or whale, is an indiscriminate appellation for the cetacea in general, in all languages of teutonic origin. Though the narwal is by no means rare in the polar seas, the difficulties attending its capture (which from what we have said may be very easily conceived) account

for the imperfection of its history, and sufficiently explains why so little is known respecting its anatomy. Lacepede informs us, that in February, 1736, an individual was seen at Hamburgh which had ventured up the Elbe, driven by a strong current and a high sea; but we do not learn that any notice was taken of it, at least by the scientific.

It is by no means at all times that the narwal exerts his astonishing velocity: he is often observed quietly and gently pursuing his course; and this is more especially the case when numbers are assembled together, as is sometimes seen in bays and inlets free from ice, as well as in the open sea. Clustered together, they form a compact phalanx, which moves slowly along; but the independent movements of each individual are thus necessarily restricted. When attacked at such a moment, they are therefore embarrassed, they impede each other; the hind ranks press upon those before, running their long weapons over each others glossy backs, and all is disorder and confusion. It is, therefore, when the narwals are seen in troops, that they are most open to the attack of man, and that the danger of the enterprise is diminished; hence such an opportunity is one of great importance to the Greenlander. Independently of the oil which this animal yields, in considerable quantity, and of very superior quality, its flesh is much prized by the Greenlanders as food, and is dried and smoked over the fire of their huts; the intestines are regarded as absolute delicacies. The tendons of the muscles serve to make thin but excellent cordage; and, according to Duhamel, (see his Traité des Pêches), they obtain from the gullet several membranous sacks, which they make use of in their fishing excursions. Whence, observes Lacepede, this animal has been supposed, as the rorquals, or sharp-nosed whales, (balanoptera,) to have under the throat a large reservoir of air, an extensive swimming bladder, although no folds of the skin, as in those animals, announce the existence of such an organ. Of the ivory spear, or tusk, which in compactness and fineness of texture exceeds that of the elephant, the Greenlanders manufacture arrows for the chase; they also use it as stakes, etc., in the construction of their huts.

The narwal has been often termed the sea unicorn; but the term unicorn is inadmissible, inasmuch as there are, in fact, two of these tusks imbedded in the

appear that the left only becomes developed, under ordinary circumstances, so as to represent a levelled spear, and this in the males alone; the females,* and indeed the young males, having them concealed with their bony sockets. This long tusk is straight, tapering to a point, and spirally twisted throughout its whole length; in its growth, it resembles the tusk of the elephant, being, like that, hollow at its base or root, and solid at its extremity. We have seen it ten feet in length. It must not be supposed that the right tusk in the male narwal never becomes developed; on the contrary, instances occasionally occur in which the right tusk projects externally nearly as far as the left; and we are inclined to believe that, when the left becomes lost or broken off by accident, the right developes itself, to replace the deficiency. That two tusks have been seen, in the narwal, projecting from the mouth, is certainly a fact; and one, moreover, which leads us to consider the right rudimentary tusk alluded to, as a milk-tusk, or, in other words, a deciduous tooth, waiting only for the developing of the permanent tusk (should circumstances demand its growth) to be driven onwards, and fall out. Such is Sir E. Home's opinion. He observes, that "as the permanent tusk in the narwal begins to form in a direct line, immediately behind the origin of the milk-tusk, the great purpose of the milk-tusk is evidently to open the road for it, and to direct the course of the permanent tusk, till it is completely pushed out by it. Dr. Fleming, however, doubts the correctness of this hypothesis, which, as he remarks, an examination of the dentition of very young narwals can alone determine.' This rudimentary tooth, which lies within the socket of the right intermaxillary bone, is slightly twisted with a dextral turn; it is solid throughout, blunt at the point, and bent a little towards the base, the face of which is oblique, smooth in the centre, and uneven towards the margin, and bordered by a ring of tu

* Sometimes the females have a tusk projecting, and even two, if we may credit the following statement mentioned by Lacepede. Captain Dirck Peterson, commander of a vessel, (the Golden Lion,) brought to Hamburg, in 1689, the skull of a female narwal, having two tusks implanted in it; the left was seven feet five inches, the right seven. Cap

tain Scoresby brought home the skull of a female in which the two tusks projected 24 inches, and this was examined by Sir E. Home.

The narwal is from two to three times as long as the tusk. One killed near Spitzbergen, in 1813, by Capt. Scoresby, measured fifteen feet, exclusive of the tusk, which projected externally five feet. Of the vital heat of the blood of the cetacea, which inhabit the polar seas, some idea may be formed from a circumstance stated respecting the individual just alluded to; "Its blood, an hour and a half after death, was at the temperature of 970." How wisely is it ordered, that animals exposed to the cold of an arctic winter, and dwelling in the midst of a sea bound up for leagues with ice-fields, or crowded with floating icebergs, should have the vital power of generating a high degree of bodily heat, in order to resist the effects of a temperature, for months together below zero!

To return, however, to the narwal. The usual length of this animal does not appear to exceed sixteen or eighteen feet, though it is occasionally seen larger. Sowerby in his British Miscellany states, that the individual driven ashore in 1800, near Boston, in Lincolnshire, was twenty-five feet long; it had two tusks, five feet six inches long. With the exception of the tusks, the narwal has no teeth; its jaws are, in short, unarmed with these instruments for tearing or grinding food; a fact which at once proves that its usual diet consists of soft matter, such as mollusca, fish, etc. Captain Scoresby found the remains of cuttlefish in the stomachs of several which were opened by him: similar remains were also found in the stomach of the one driven ashore near Boston.

In its general figure, the narwal resembles the grampus or the porpoise the muzzle, however, is blunt and rounded; the mouth is small, and instead of a dorsal fin, a sharp ridge two inches in height, and two feet and a half in length, runs along the middle of the back; the eyes are small and black, and the blow-hole, which is placed directly over them, is a single opening, of a semicircular form, and upwards of

three inches in breadth. The fins are twelve or fourteen inches long, and are placed at one-fifth the length of the animal from the snout. The tail is about twenty inches long, and between three and four feet in breadth; the circumference of an individual fifteen feet long, at the thickest part of the body, was eight feet five inches. The general colour of the skin on the back is yellowish white, marbled with a dark tint of grey. The ground colour becomes lighter on the sides, and the marbling changes into spots, which disappear on the under surface, which is whitish. The young are much darker than the adults.

It is yet a matter of doubt whether there be more than one species of narwal, the monodon monoceros of Linnæus. Lacepede considers that there are two, the common narwal, and the small-headed narwal, (monodon microcephalus ;) and such is also the opinion of Dr. Fleming. Cuvier, however, in his last edition of the Regne Animal, positively states that there is but one; and in a note adds, that the monodon microcephalus of Lacepede, as figured by that author, is only a common narwal, a little less miserably drawn than it is in the preceding plate. The subject, therefore, remains to be settled.

It was formerly supposed that the ivory of the narwal was an antidote against pestilential maladies; and various authors, as Bartholin, Wurmius, and others, have entered largely into the subject. "The kings of Denmark had, it is said, and perhaps have still, a throne composed entirely of narwal's tusks, in the Château de Rosenberg." Such was the ignorance and superstition of by-gone days. In our time, the ivory of the narwal is valued for its close texture and great hardness: fine specimens of the entire tusk may be seen at many of the cutlers' shops in London, as well as

with that colossal monster, and of waging successful war against the fiercest and most powerful tenants of the sea, we cannot but view the power of the God of nature, who in his wisdom has created it, and endowed it with weapons which render it formidable to every antagonist. It" passeth through the paths of the sea," and testifies of the great Creator, who has appointed it to fill up its place in the economy of living beings, and for purposes which we cannot unravel, made it as is, with appetites and instincts in accordance with its structure. M.

INFANTICIDE IN THE SOUTH SEA ISLANDS.

The

FREQUENTLY have our feelings been most powerfully excited at the examination of our school children; and scenes more affecting than some which have been witnessed on such occasions, it is scarcely possible to conceive. One of these, which occurred at my own station at Raiatea, I will briefly describe. Upwards of six hundred children were present. A feast was prepared for them, and they walked through the settlement in procession, most of them dressed in European garments, with little hats and bonnets made by those very parents who would have destroyed them, had not Christianity come to their rescue. children added much to the interest of the day, by preparing flags with such mottoes as the following: "What a blessing the gospel is !" "The Christians of England sent us the gospel." "Had it not been for the gospel, we should have been destroyed as soon as we were born." On some, texts of Scripture were inscribed: "Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." "Suffer little children to come unto me," and other similar passages. Insensible, indeed, must he have been who could have witnessed such a scene without the liveliest feelings of delight. After proceeding through the settlement, they were conducted to the spacious chapel, and opened the service by singing the jubilee hymn in the native language. The venerable old king then took the chair. He had been worshipped as a god, and had led fierce warriors to the

battle and the fight," but he evidently felt that he had never occupied a station so delightful or honourable as that of presiding at the examination of the child