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Show 1868.] MR. R. BROWN ON THE SEALS OF GREENLAND. 429 an idea that there were two species. The whalers declare that the female Walrus is without tusks; I have certainly seen females without them, but, again, others with both well developed. In this respect it may be similar to the female Narwhal, which has occasionally no "horn" developed; I do not think, however, that there is more than one species of Walrus in the Arctic regions or elsewhere. Habits and food.-On the floes, lying over soundings and shoals, the Walruses often accumulate in immense numbers, and lie huddled upon the ice. More frequently, in Davis's Strait and Baffin's Bay, they are found floating about on pieces of drift ice, in small family parties of six or seven ; and I have even seen only one lying asleep on the ice. Whether in large or small parties, one is always on the watch, as was long ago observed by the sagacious Cook : the Watch, on the approach of danger, will rouse those next to them ; and the alarm being spread, presently the whole herd will be on the qui vive. When attacked, unlike the other Seals (unless it be the Cystophora), it will not retreat, but boldly meet its enemies. I was one of a party in a boat which harpooned a solitary Walrus asleep on a piece of ice. It immediately dived, but presently arose, and, notwithstanding all our exertions with lance, axe, and rifle, stove in the bows of the boat; indeed we were only too glad to cut the line adrift and save ourselves on the floe which the Walrus had left, until assistance could reach us. Luckily for us the enraged Morse was magnanimous enough not to attack its chop-fallen enemies, but made off grunting indignantly, with a gun-harpoon and new whale-line dangling from its bleeding flanks. Its atluk or breathing-hole is cleanly finished, like that of the Seals, but in much thicker ice, and the radiating lines of fracture much more marked*. The food of the Walrus has long been a matter of dispute, some writers, such as Schreber, Fischer, and others, going so far as to deny its being carnivorous at all, because Fischer saw in the stomach of one " long branches of seaweed, Fucus digitatus;" and Mr. Bell seems even to doubt whether the small number of grinding-teeth, and more especially their extreme shortness and rounded form, are not rather calculated to bruise the half-pulpy mass of marine vegetables than to hold aud pierce the fish's scaly cuirass. I have generally found in its stomach various species of shelled Mollusca, chiefly Mya truncata, a bivalve very common in the Arctic regions on banks and shoals, and a quantity of green slimy matter which I took to be decomposed Algae which had accidentally found their way into its stomach through being attached to the shells of the Mollusca of which the food of the Walrus chiefly consists. I cannot say that I ever saw any vegetable matter in its stomach which could be decided to have been taken in as food, or which could be distinguished as such. As for its not being carnivorous, if further proof were necessary I have only to add that whenever it was killed near where a Whale's carcass had been let * There are many interesting details of the habits of the Walrus in Kane's 'Arctic Explorations' and ' First Grinnel Expedition,' in Hayes's 'Boat Journey' and ' Open Polar Sea,' and in Belcher's ' Last of the Arctic Voyages.' |