Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.12351

    Narwhal

    Date
    1811
    Creator
    Edward Mitchell (British) , Engraver
    After
    John Fleming (1785 - 1857, British) , Naturalist
    Object type
    Library reference
    RCN32515
    Material
    Technique
    Dimensions
    height (print): 125mm
    width (print): 211mm
    Subject
    Biology
       > Zoology
    Content object
    nature
       > animal
    Description
    Marine zoological studies of the male Narwhal Monodon monoceros. Side and underside views (figures 1-2) with a detail of the mammal’s blow-hole (figure 3).

    Plate 6 accompanying the paper ‘Description of a small-headed Narwhal, cast ashore in Zetland’, by John Fleming, Memoirs of the Wernerian Natural History Society, v.1 1808-1810, pp.131-148 (Edinburgh, 1811). Inscribed above: ‘Plate VI’. Inscribed below: ‘Rev. J Fleming delt. E. Mitchell sculpt.’

    This small (12 feet in length) whale beached ‘at the entrance of the Sound of Weesdale, in Zetland [Shetland], on the morning of the 27th September 1808. The fishermen who live in the neighbourhood of the Sounds, observed it entangled among the rocks on the preceding day; and when they went to bring it ashore, they found it dead, though still warm.’

    Rev. John Fleming (1785-1857) British naturalist and Free Church of Scotland minister appointed to the parish of Bressay, Shetland.
    Associated place
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       > Europe
          > United Kingdom
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