108 ODOB^NUS ROSMARUS ATLANTIC WALEUS. 



June or July. The females, he believes, suckle their young for 

 two years, and that hence not less than three years elapse be- 

 tween each birth. The females with their newly -born young 

 are said to keep aloof from the society of other Walruses, and 

 that females are never found to be pregnant during the year 

 following the birth of their young. Females in the second year 

 of suckling their young collect in large herds and live apart 

 from the full-grown males. Of thirty full-grown Walruses killed 

 by Malmgren's harpooner in Henlopen Straits, in the month of 

 July, not one was a male. Where the full-grown males were at 

 this time was unknown, but they were believed by the hunters 

 to be " on the banks," remote from the land, while the females 

 with their young sought the bays and open sea near the shores, 

 the two sexes thus living in separate herds.* 



Notwithstanding the explicitness of Malmgren's account, 

 who no doubt correctly details his own experience in the 

 matter, there is much rebutting testimony, most observers 

 reporting that both sexes and the young occur in the same 

 herds, t The only detailed account of the pairing and repro- 



* See further Holmgren's paper, as translated in Arch, flir Naturgesch., 

 1864, pp. 70-72. 



t Says Dr. Kane: " The early spring is the breeding season, ... at 

 which time the female with her calf is accompanied by the griin-visagecl 

 father, surging in loving trios from crack to crack, sporting around the berg- 

 water, or basking in the sun." Arctic Exploration, vol. ii, p. 131. 



Dr. Hayes, referring to a herd upon which he made an attack, thus ob- 

 serves : ' ' Besides the old bulls, the group contained several cows and a few 

 calves of various sizes some evidently yearlings, others but recently born, 

 and others but half or three quarters grown.. Some were without tusks, 

 while on others they were just sprouting ; and above this they were of vari- 

 ous sizes up to those of the big bulls, which had great curved cones of ivory 

 nearly three feet long." Open Polar Sea, p. 406. 



Lament also refers to the presence of young and old, males and females, 

 in the same herd, and to the custom of the Walrus-hunters of striking a 

 young one in order to detain the herd, which, through sympathy, join con- 

 certedly in its defense, thus affording the hunters opportunity for further 

 slaughter. Seasons with the Sea-horses, pp. . 



Through the kindness of Prof. Henry A. Ward, of Rochester, N. Y., I am 

 in receipt, in answer to inquiries respecting the habits and reproduction of 

 the Walrus, of the following information from the pen of Captain Adams, 

 of the whaling-steamer "Arcturus," from Dundee to Baffin's Bay. Captain 

 Adams, writing from long experience in Walrus-hunting, says: "I am of 

 opinion that the female Walrus prefers low flats of land on which to bring 

 forth her young. The time is in mid-spring. In early May I have seen very 

 young Walruses on the ice with their mothers. I have also seen afterbirths 

 on the ice, but still think that low flat laud is preferred when attainable. I do 



