Collier's New Encyclopedia

A complete general encyclopedia of 1921 — the world as it was understood just after the Great War, from Aachen to Zwingli, across twelve volumes and six thousand pages.

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Narwhal

NARWAL, or NAR- WHALE, a cetacean, called also the seaunicorn; the Monodon monoceros. The name sea-unicorn is given because the male has a horn 6, 7, or even 10 feet long, one of the teeth in the upper jaw extraordinarily prolonged. It is the left tusk which makes the horn, the right being rarely developed. The tusk is spirally furrowed, and is of ivory, like the tusk of an elephant. The length of the narwhal varies from 15 to 20 or 22 feet, the head being one-fourth of the whole, and the horn one-half.

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