. Brehm's Life of animals : a complete natural history for popular home instruction and for the use of schools. Mammalia. Mammals; Animal behavior. 574 THE WHALES. down with seeming greatest regularity, pursuing their course in wavy lines. Such schools are not always composed of individuals of the same sex, but consist of males and females ; Disposition, Food Modern seafarers describe this Whale and Foesofthe as a very lively, agile animal, which Narwhal. gives the sea an aspect of animation by reason of its extraordinary speed and repeated divings and reappearances, and enchains th
. Brehm's Life of animals : a complete natural history for popular home instruction and for the use of schools. Mammalia. Mammals; Animal behavior. 574 THE WHALES. down with seeming greatest regularity, pursuing their course in wavy lines. Such schools are not always composed of individuals of the same sex, but consist of males and females ; Disposition, Food Modern seafarers describe this Whale and Foesofthe as a very lively, agile animal, which Narwhal. gives the sea an aspect of animation by reason of its extraordinary speed and repeated divings and reappearances, and enchains the atten- tion of the observer. It certainly does not wage such bloody wars with other Whales as have been fabled, and it lives on amicable terms with its own kind. Sea cucumbers, mollusks and fish form the food of this notable creature. Manifold dangers and many foes menace the life of the Narwhal. Of no other Whale does one find so many remains as of this one. Winter, which often arrives with surprising abruptness, binding the seas of the high north in fetters of ice, endangers and renders difficult the existence of all air-breath- ing marine animals, puts an end to the lives of hun- dreds and thousands of this species, and when the than they are now, for we see in them only an ivory- like mass. About one hundred and fifty years ago there were still very few Narwhals' tusks in Europe and those that seafarers chanced to find met with a ready sale. They were held to be the horns of the Unicorn of the Bible, and that is why Englishmen place this member on the fabulous Unicorn of their national coat-of-arms. Emperors and kings hac them made into rods, adorned with the daintiest carvings, for the purpose of being carried behinc these monarchs on state occasions, and valuable crosiers for bishops were also manufactured out of them. As late as the sixteenth century four Nar- whals' tusks were preserved in the Baireuth museum on the Plassenburg as extraordinary curiosities. One of the
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjecta, booksubjectmammals
