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Updated: August 28, 2024
Hilaire, in his indefatigable endeavors to trace out points of resemblance connecting together animals the most unlike in outward appearance, discovered, along the lower jaw of a young whale, certain traces of teeth, indicating a last effort on the part of nature to carry out her usual plan in furnishing the jaws of mammals; but, like the right-hand tooth of the narwhal, these vain attempts soon disappear, overgrown and lost in the tissue of the bone, so that the whale offers us a true type of an edentate, classable with the ant-eater, if one dared, and some people have dared, which by this time will not surprise you.
"'Thank you, said the Dean; 'being cast away in the cold don't stop us from paying compliments, anyway; but I was thinking that we ought to save all the blubber of that old narwhal down there; we'll want the oil by and by. "'What for? said I. "'To burn, said he. "'Nonsense! said I; 'how are you going to burn it?
Like the narwhal it has no dorsal fin. Though the smallest member of the whale family it is sometimes more than twenty feet long; but usually ranges from thirteen to sixteen feet. The young are bluish black in colour and may be seen swimming beside their mother who feeds them with a very thick milk. These young grow rapidly and become mottled and then white as they grow older.
How some of them have mouths full of strong teeth, like these porpoises; and others, like the great sperm whale in the South Sea, have huge teeth in their lower jaws, and in the upper only holes into which those teeth fit; others like the bottle-nose, only two teeth or so in the lower jaw; and others, like the narwhal, two straight tusks in the upper jaw, only one of which grows, and is what you call a narwhal's horn.
The United States were the first in the field; and in New York they made preparations for an expedition destined to pursue this narwhal. A frigate of great speed, the Abraham Lincoln, was put in commission as soon as possible.
Glasses were used with feverish activity. It was a grand defiance given to the giant narwhal, and he could scarcely fail to answer the summons and "appear." Two days passed, the steam was at half pressure; a thousand schemes were tried to attract the attention and stimulate the apathy of the animal in case it should be met in those parts.
But in point of fact Grampus knew nothing of the book until his friend Lord Narwhal sent him an American newspaper containing a spirited article by the well-known Professor Sperm N. Whale which was rather equivocal in its bearing, the passages quoted from Merman being of rather a telling sort, and the paragraphs which seemed to blow defiance being unaccountably feeble, coming from so distinguished a Cetacean.
Meanwhile they made themselves agreeable to the new arrivals, whose hearts they gladdened by telling them that their friends in the north had plenty of narwhal horns and bones and walrus tusks and sinews to exchange for their wood and iron. But to return to Ippegoo on his distant and elevated outlook.
It could swim in the sea, and was so big that it could haul whale and narwhal to shore. The narwhal it would hook on to its side teeth, and swim with them hanging there. The man who owned it had cut holes in its jaws, and let in thongs through those holes, so that he could make it turn to either side by pulling at the thongs.
And I think I may say I have the finest collection of narwhal tusks in the world. All the best skins and horns have to go through London, and L. Maxwell M'Leod, he knows where they come from, and where they go to. That's his business." For the rest of the voyage up-channel Mr.
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