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Show 550 MR. R. BROWN ON THE CETACEANS [Nov. 12, Spdckhuggare, Svdrdfisk (Swedes); Stourvagn, Staurhyning (Norse); Ardluik or Ardluk $, Ardlurksoak f (Greenlanders). In all probability the "Pernak," or Parnak (Physeter catodon, O. Fab.), is also to be referred to Orca gladiator. Hr. Fleischer assured me that it was an Orca, but only known to him by name. Curiously enough, the Kamschatdales and Aleutians have very similar names (Agluck, fide Pallas, Zool. Rosso-Asiat. p. 305 ; and Aguluck, fide Chamisso, Nov. Act. Acad. Nat. Cur. vol. xii. p. 262) for animals closely allied to, if not identical with, this species. The Ardluk is only seen in the summer time along the whole coast of Greenland. Wherever the White Whale, the Right Whale, or the Seals are found, there is also their ruthless enemy the Killer. The White Whale and Seals often run ashore in terror of this Cetacean ; and I have seen Seals spring out of the water when pursued by it. The whalers hate to see it, for its arrival is the signal for every Whale to leave that portion of the sea. It is said that it will not go among ice, and that the Right Whale, when attacked by it, keeps among ice to escape its persecution. Occasionally the ends of the laminae of whalebone are found bitten off, apparently by the Killer; and probably this is the origin of the story that it preys on the tongue of the Whale. Linne* very happily styles it-" Balae-narum phocarumque tyrannusf quas turmatim aggreditur." Though subsisting chiefly on large fishes, they will not hesitate to attack the largest Whalebone Whales, and are able to swallow whole large Porpoises and Seals. Dr. Eschricht took out of the stomach of one thirteen Porpoises and fourteen Seals, the voracious animal having been choked by the skin of a fifteenth. It has been known to swallow four Seals at least immediately one after the other, and in the course of a few days as many as twenty-seven individuals'];. I know of a case in which they attacked a white-painted herring-boat in the western islands, probably mistaking it for a Beluga! 11. PHOCiENA COMMUNIS, Brookes. Popular names.-Purpess, Sea-pig (English seamen); 3Iarsuin§, Herring-hogs, Pellock, Bucker, Puffy-dunter, Neesock% (fishermen of Northern Islands and coasts of Scotland) ; Nisa and, more rarely, Piglertok (Greenlanders). The Porpoise arrives in the spring in Davis Strait, and stops there until November, but does not go further north than from lat. 67° to lat. 69° N. They are now and then caught off the coast during * Mant. Plant, vol. ii. p. 523. t Gunnerus (Throndh. Selsk. Skriv. iv. p. 99) styles it Kobbeherre-Lord of the Seals. % Nilsson, Skand. Fauna. (Daggdjuren), p. 607. § The old Norsemen as they poured forth from Scandinavia on their predatory or colonizing expeditions leavened not only the habits but the language of the conquered. Marsvin is the Swedish word for the Porpoise, hence the French Marsouin and the same Shetland word. Nise is the Norse term for it; hence we have Nisa in Greenland and Neesock in Shetland (the ock being used there, as in many other words, as a diminutive). Porpoise is only a corruption of the French pore poisson, which we have almost literally translated into Sea-pig. |