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Show 1871.] MR. J. W. CLARK ON THE NARWHAL. 45 favour of this view ; for he says, in his ' Fauna Grcenlandica*, " maxilla superiore, latere alterutro, jam dextro, jam sinistro, prostat dens praelongus." That he should have made such a mistake is ingeniously accounted for by Reinhardt, who argues that, as Fabricius resided in the south of Greenland, at Narksalik in Frederikshaab district, whereas the Narwhal rarely appears south of the 65th parallel, it is highly probable that he never saw one alive, or even a skull, the tusk being the only part of the animal that was preserved in those days. The statement of Fabricius is, so far as I know, utterly unsupported. I have never seen a Narwhal skull with a tusk on the right side, nor heard of a single well accredited instance of such a skull having been seen by others. One instance alone is mentioned in the whole literature of the subject; and that, though resting on the testimony of Pallas, must be received with caution. He states**)- that he saw at the British Museum in London a Narwhal skeleton, 12' long, with a tusk, 4' in length, on the right side of the skull. Pallas is generally so accurate, and in this particular case is so precise in giving the measurements of the specimen referred to, that one cannot help feeling sure that he is writing from notes and not from memory. Otherwise the length of time, nearly fifty years J, that intervened between his visit to London and the publication of the ' Zoographia,' coupled with the fact that the specimen cannot now be found, and that no record has been preserved of its existence, would suggest that a mistake had been made. As the case stands I confess that I feel disposed to accept Pallas's statement as accurate, and to regard the remarkable specimen he saw as a unique divergence from the rule. On the other hand, Scoresby § never saw a tusk on the right side of the head; and Reinhardt ||, who in his position at Copenhagen has had singular opportunities of studying the Cetacea, says that during the past thirty years he has examined as many Narwhal skulls, and never found a tusk on the right side. I may take this opportunity of correcting a statement of Owen's, which at first sight would seem to favour the existence of a tooth on the right side. In his description of a Narwhal skull in the Hunterian Collection, No. 2525, he remarks, " The left tusk is, in this instance, abortive," implying that the right is developed *^[. On reference to the skull, however, it appears that he has mistaken the right side for the left, as so many of his predecessors have done ; for it is perfectly normal in all respects. Although there is no evidence in support of the development of a * Ed. 1780, p. 30. t " In alio sceleto, quod Museum Britannicum habet, duodecimpedali, den-tem unicum quadripedalem in dextro alveolo, alterum alveolum plane oblittera-tum vidi." (Zoographia Rosso-Asiatica, i. p. 296.) + Pallas visited London, according to Prof. Reinlwdt, in 1761. The 'Zoographia' was published in 1811. 8 Arctic Regions, i. p. 490. || Reinhardt, I. c. •^ Cat. Mus. Roy. Coll. Surg. (Osteology), ii. p. 185. The error was pointed out to m e by Prof. Flower. |