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Show 430 MR. R. BROWN ON THE SEALS OF GREENLAND. [June 25, adrift its stomach was invariably found crammed full of the krang or flesh of that Cetacean. As for its not being able to hold the slippery cuirass of a fish, I fear the distinguished author of ' The British Mammalia' is in error. The Narwhal, which is even less fitted in its want of dentition for an ichthyophagous existence, lives almost entirely upon platichthyoid fishes and Cephalopoda. Finally the experimentum crucis has been performed, in the fact that fish have been taken out of its stomach; and a most trustworthy man, the captain of a Norwegian sealer, has assured me (without possessing any theory on the subject) that he has seen one rise out of the water with a fish in its mouth*. In its stomach I have often seen small stones or gravel; and round its atluk considerable quantities are always seen: this is a habit which it possesses in common with Phoca barbata and even Beluga catodon. These stones may be taken in accidentally, but still they may serve some purpose in its digestive economy. Next to man, its chief enemy is the Polar Bear. The Eskimo used to tell many tales of their battles; and though I have never been fortunate enough to see any of these scenes, yet I have heard the whalers give most circumstantial accounts of the Walrus drowning the Bear, &c. These accounts may be taken merely for what they are worth; but still this shows that they are not wholly confined to Eskimo fable, and ought therefore not to be hastily thrown aside. There is no doubt, however, that the Bear and the Walrus are (like all the Pinnipedia) but indifferent friends. Another pest I believe I discovered upon this animal for the first time, in 1861, in the shape of two undescribed species of Heematopinus, one invariably infesting the base of the mystachial bristles, and the other its body. I also found the Seals of Davis's Strait much troubled with another species (Heematopinus phocee, Lucas) f. I have seen the Walrus awuking loudly on the ice, tumbling about, and rushing back from the water to the ice, and from the ice to the water, and then swimming off to another piece, and repeating the same operation as if in pain. A few hours afterwards I saw a flock of Saxicola cenanthe (it was on a land-floe, close to the Fru Islands) alight on the spot. On going over, I found the ice speckled with one of these species of Heematopinus, on which the birds had been feeding; and the unfortunate Walrus seems to have been in the throes of clearing itself of these troublesome friends, after the approved fashion. Subsequently I have seen these and other small birds alight on the back of the Walrus to peck at these insects, just as crows may be seen sitting on the backs of cattle in our fields. Its tusks it apparently uses to dig up the molluscous food on which it chiefly subsists; and I have seen it also use them to drag up its huge body on to the ice. In moving on shore it aids its clumsy progression by their means. * The young specimen which died this spring in the Society's Gardens was in a very poor condition, and afforded but an indifferent notion of the lion-like Awuk which destroyed our boat in Scott's Inlet. t Proc. Roy. Phys. Soc. Edin. 1863. » |
