FAMILY ODOB^ENHXE. 



them with forms with which they had no relationship. In the 

 infancy of science, nothing was perhaps more natural than that 

 animals should be classified in accordance with their mode of 

 life, their habitat r or their external form, and we are hence not 

 surprised to find that Eondelet, Gesner, Aldrovandus, Jonstou, 

 and other pre-Linnsean writers, arranged the Pinnipeds, as well 

 as the Sirenians and Cetaceans, with the fishes, or that, other 

 early writers should term all four-footed creatures " Quadru- 

 peds," and divide them into "Land Quadrupeds" and "Quadru- 

 peds of the Sea." While all marine animals were by some early 

 writers classified as "fishes,"* the Pinnipeds were much sooner 

 'disassociated from the true fishes than were the Cetaceans and 

 Sirenians, the mammalian affinities of which were not at first 

 recognized by even the great Linne himself, who, as late as the 

 tenth edition of his " Systema Xatune " (1758), still left them 

 in the class u PiscesS" 1 



In view of the several excellent descriptions and very credit- 

 able figures of the Atlantic Walrus that appeared as early as 

 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (a detailed account of 

 which will be given later), it is surprising that the early sys- 

 tematic writers should display such complete ignorance of some 

 of the most obvious external characters of this animal, as was 

 notably the case with Linne, Klein, Brisson, Erxleben, and 

 Gmeliu, who strangely associated the Walrus and the Manatee 

 as members of the same genus, and grouped them with such 

 diverse creatures as Sloths and Elephants. Linne, it is true, in 

 the earlier editions of the " System a ISTatura?," placed the Wal- 

 rus with the Seals in the genus Phoca, in his order Ferce, a near 

 hit at their true affinities. Later, however, following probably 

 Klein and Brisson, he fell into the grave error of removing them 

 to nearly the most unnatural association possible. In this con- 

 nection, it may prove not uninteresting to sketch, in brief out- 

 line, the strange history of the classification of this singular 

 group of fin-footed Carnivores. 



As already stated, Linne's first allocation of the group was 

 the natural one. Brisson,t in 1750, led in the long role of error 

 by forming his third "order" of mammals of the Elephant, the 



*Most modern languages still retain relies of this ancient custom, as 

 evinced, for example, in such English words as shell-fish, cray-Jixh, whale- 

 JlsJuri/. Ncid-fmliery, etc., while hvalfisli (Swedish), wahisch (Danish), i 

 (German), etc., are common, vernacular names applied to Cetaceans. 



tRegnu Animal, 1756, p. 4~. 



