Leo Barabe, age 11, So. Portland, Maine, for his question:

Is there a animal called a narwhal?

There is such an animal, but you might not believe it even if you saw him. He is one of those impossible animals, like the pangolin. We see him, but common sense tells us that he cannot be real. But the narwhal is real, though we are not likely to see him because to find him we would have to search in sorry remote and unfriendly places.

In the Middle Ages, there were many pictures of the unicorn and most people believed this horsey creature to be real. Modern science would need far more proof than a portrait. But even in the Middle Ages they had more proof, or what they thought was more proof, of the unicorn. From time to time a wandering sailor would bring back a straight tapering horn, spiraled with ridges.

This, surely, was a real horn from a real unicorn. It was not. The rare object was the upper, left canine tooth of a narwhal. We could deduce that the wandering sailor had been on a voyage to the Arctic or into the icy waters of the far northern Atlantic, though even this we could not prove. In any case, that bleak region was the home of the narwhal who was the original owner of the so called unicorn's horn.

The narwhal is a bulky member of the whale family. He is padded with blubber to keep him warm in the chilly waters and his skin is a blotchy mixture of greys. He may be twenty feet long arid the unioorxla horn which sticks cut straight from his mouth may be another nine feet long. Actually, the horn is a tusk or overgrown tooth. It is the left upper canine tooth and it pokes out from his mouth slightly left of center.

A whale, including the unlikely narwhal, is a mammal.

Unlike a fish, it is a warm blooded, air breathing animal which gives birth to live babies. As a family, the whales are smart fellows. The narwhal is smart enough to keep a brest  hole open when ice freezes over the water. Also, sailors can hear him. When he comes to the surface for a breath of air, he lets out a long shrill whistle, perhaps to get the stale air out of his lungs. He is a hungry fellow and spends his time cruising for food. He dines on skate and cuttlefish, turbot and halibut and usually swallows his food whole.

We have not had much chance to study the narwhal and his family life because even in his remote and unfriendly home he is a rare animal, The Eskimos may know more about him than our own scientists, for they eat his meat and use his oil to light their lamps. They also use his tough intestines to make linings for their winter clothing.