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Show 428 MR. R. BROWN ON THE SEALS OF GREENLAND. [June 25, Popular names.-Sea-horse (English sailors) ; Walrus and 31orse (Russ., English naturalists and authors) ; llvalross (Swedish and Danish) ; Havhest (Sea-horse) and Rosmar (Norse) ; 31orsk (Lapp) ; Awuk (Greenlanders and Eskimo generally): this word is pronounced dook and (like many savage names of animals) is derived from the peculiar sound it utters, a guttural dook! dook ! General descriptive remarks.-The general form of the Walrus is familiar enough. However, specimens in museums and the miserably woebegone cubs which have been already twice brought to this country but poorly represent the Walrus in its native haunts. The skin of the forehead (iu stuffed specimens) is generally dried to the skull; while in the live animal it is full, and the cheeks tumid. The skin of old animals is generally wrinkled and gnarled. I have seen an old Walrus quite spotted with leprous-looking marks consisting of irregular tubercular-looking white cartilaginous hairless blotches; they appeared to be the cicatrices of wounds inflicted at different times by ice, the claws of the Polar Bear, or met with in the wear and tear of the rough-and-tumble life a Sea-horse must lead in N. lat. 74°. The very circumstantial account of the number of mystachial bristles given in some accounts is most erroneous; they vary in the number of rows and in the number in each row in almost every specimen. They are elevated on a minute tubercle, and the spaces between these bristles are covered with downy whitish hair. I have seen several young Walruses in all stages, from birth until approaching the adult stage, and never yet saw them of a black colour, and should have been inclined to look upon as unfounded the statement that they are so, had it not been for the high authority of its author*. All I saw were of the ordinary brown colour, though, like most animals, they get lighter as they grow old. Neither are the muffle, palm, and soles " hairy when young;" in one which I examined before it was able to take the water I saw no difference between it and its mother in this respect. The Walrus appears to cast its nails; for in several which I examined about the same time (viz. in August) most of the nails which had been developed were gone, and young ones beginning to appear. The dentition has been examined by McGillivray*f, Rapp J, Owen §, Peters]|, &c.; so that I need only touch upon that. In an aged male which I examined at Scott's Inlet, Davis's Strait, August 3, 1861, the small fifth molar on the right side of the upper jaw still remained, but loose; on the other side the corresponding alveolus was not yet absorbed. Shaw (Gen. Zool. i. p. 234) has figured two species of this animal, and inferred their existence principally from the differences in the representations given by Johnston and Cook. Curiously enough, Pontopiddan tells us that the Norwegian fishermen in his day had * Gray, Cat. Seals and Whales in Brit. Mus. 2nd ed. p. 36. t Loc. cit. antea. + Bull. Sc. Nat. xvii. p. 280. § Proc. Zool. Soc. 1853, p. 103. || Monatsber. der Akad. der Wiss. zu Berlin, Dec. 1864, p. 685 ; transl. Annals Nat. Hist. xv. (3rd series) p. 355. |