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Show 1868.] MR. R. BROWN ON THE SEALS OF GREENLAND. 433 fall into an error from seeing these teeth among the natives so far south, if we did not know that they are bartered from the more northern tribes. On the American Atlantic seaboard they come as far south as the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and stragglers even further. In Lord Shuldham's day they assembled on the Magdalene Islands in that gulf, to the number of 7000 or 8000 ; and sometimes as many as 1600 were killed (or rather slaughtered) at one onset by the hunters who pursued them*. It has been killed several times on the British coast; and I suspect that it is not an unfrequent visitor to our less-frequented shores. Perhaps not a few of the " Sea-horses " and " Sea-cows " which every now and again terrify the fishermen on the shores of the wild western Scottish lochs, and get embalmed among their folklore, may be the Walrus. In addition to those already recorded I know of one which was seen in Orkney, in 1857, and another the Shetland fishermen told me had been seen in the Nor' Isles about the same time. There is, however, some ground for believing that at. one time it was, if not a regular member of our fauna, at least a very frequent visitor. Hector Boece (or Boethius, as his name has been Latinized), in his quaint ' Cronikles of Scotland,' mentions it towards the end of the fifteenth century as one of the regular inhabitants of our shores ; and old Roman historians describe the horse-gear and arms of the ancient Britons as ornamented with bright polished ivory. It is difficult to suppose that this could have been anything else but the carved tusks of the Walrus. It is not, however, without the bounds of possibility that this might have been some of the x\frican Elephants' ivory which the Phoenician traders bartered for tin with the natives of the Cassite-rides. Except for its occasional movements from one portion of its feeding-ground to the other, the Walrus cannot be classed among the migratory animals. In Greenland it is found all the year round, but not south of Rifkol, in lat. 65°. In an inlet called Irsortok it collects in considerable numbers, to the terror of the natives who have to pass that way ; and not unfrequently kayakers who have gone " express," have to return again, being afraid of the threatening aspect of " Awuk." A voyager has well remarked that " Awuk " is the lion of the Danish Eskimo; they always speak of him with the most profound respect I It has been found as far north as the Eskimo live, or explorers have gone. On the western shores of Davis's Strait, it is not uncommon about Pond's, Scott's, and Home Bays, and is killed in considerable numbers by the natives. It is not now found in such numbers as it once was; and no reasonable man who sees the slaughter to which it is subject in Spitzbergen and elsewhere can doubt that its days are numbered. It has already become extinct in several places where it was once common. Its utter extinction is a foregone conclusion. Von Baer has studied its distribution in the Arctic sea; and, so far as they go, his memoir and map may be relied on; both, however, require considerable modifications f. * Apud Pennant, ' Arctic Zoology,' p. 149. t Memoires de l'Academie de St. Petersbourg, t. iv. p. 97, t. 4 (1836). |