Swordsmen of the Deep.

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 126, 31 October 1885, Page 5

Swordsmen of the Deep.

imagine wnaies iencmg witn one anotner for amusement ! It peem.3 as if Buch a thing could not be ; and yet there are whales of a certain species which not only fence with one another, but use their teeth for swords It is the narwhal that fences. One of the teeth of the male narwhal always goes through the upper lip and stands out like a spear, straight in front of the animal. It seems as if all the material that should have gone to fill the narwhal's mouth with teeth had gone to the one tooth that grows out through the lip, for sometimes this tooth is eight feet loner- The animal itself, from head to tail, is seldom more than sixteen feet in length Of what use such an enormous tooth is to the whale no one knows. Some persons say it is used for spearing fish ; others, that its use is to stir up the mud in the bottom of the ocean in order to ecare out the fish that may be hiding there; and one man cays the tooth is for the purpose of breaking holes in the ice in winter ; for the narwhal, like all whales, is obliged to come to the surface at intervals to breathe. Whatever the tooth is intended to be used for, it is certain that when the narwhal wishes to play it finds another narwhal of a like mind, and away they charge at each other till the long toothswords clash together. They are active as well as frolicsome, and sailors tell of seeing them crossing swords in this way, thrusting and parrying, and rolling and darting about with marvellous agility and grace. The narwhal is light grey in colour, and covered with black spots. For a great many reasons it is valued by the Greenlanders. It furnishes a very fine quality of oil, its flesh is used for food, and its skin, made into a jelly, and called mattak, is considered a dainty too choice for ordinary occasions, This "swordsman of the deep," as I have called him, is a warm-blooded animal, that must not be confounded with the swordfish, both of which are entirely different from the narwhal.