Narwhal The tusks were staples of the cabinet of curiosities. European knowledge of the tusk's origin developed gradually during the Age of Exploration, as explorers and naturalists began to visit Arctic regions themselves. The narwhal was one of two possible explanations of the giant sea phenomenon written by Jules Verne in his 1870 novel "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea". Verne thought that it would be unlikely that there was such a gigantic narwhal in existence. The size of the narwhal, or "unicorn of the sea", as found by Verne, would have been . For the narwhal to have caused the
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzel, who is known to be responsible for many serious changes in Verne's books. In the original text the mysterious captain was a Polish nobleman, avenging his family who were killed by the Russians in retaliation for the captain's taking part in the Polish January Uprising of 1863. As France was at the time allied with the Russian Empire, the target for Nemo's wrath was changed to France's old enemy, the British Empire, to avoid political trouble. Professor Pierre Aronnax does not suspect Nemo's origins, as these were explained only later, in Verne's next book. What remained in