FOOD. 135 



found in their stomachs by different observers than from the 

 peculiar conformation of their teeth. Martens, j udging from the 

 appearance of their excrement, thought it must subsist mostly 

 upon sea-grass. Anderson, however, correctly stated that they 

 subsisted upon Mollusca, which they obtained from the bottom 

 of the sea by digging with their tusks. Cranz also says its food 

 seems to consist wholly of " muscles and such kind of shell- 

 fish" and "sea-grass." F. Cuvier, Bell, and others, thought the 

 dentition indicated that their diet must be mainly, if not wholly, 

 vegetable. Most modern observers who have given attention 

 to the matter state that they have often found vegetable mat- 

 ter mixed with other food in their stomachs, some claiming the 

 food to be in small part vegetable, but mainly animal, while 

 others think the fragments of sea-weed so frequently met with 

 in their stomachs are only accidentally present. Mr. Brown, who 

 appears to have had excellent opportunity of obtaining infor- 

 mation on this point, observes: "I have generally found in its 

 stomach various species of shelled Mollusca, chiefly Mya trun- 

 cata, 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 Algte 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 [sic] being car- 

 nivorous, if further proof were necessary, I have only to add 

 that whenever it was killed near where a Whale's carcass had 

 been let adrift, its stomach was invariably found crammed full 

 of the Twang or flesh of that Cetacean. As for its not being- 

 able to hold the slippery cuirass of a fish, I fear the distin- 

 guished author of l The British Mammalia ' [Bell ] is in error. The 

 Narwhal, which is even less fitted in its want of dentition for 

 an ichthyophagous existence, lives almost entirely upon pla- 

 tichthyoid fishes and Cephalopoda. Finally the experimcntum 

 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.' 7 * 

 That it will readily subsist on fish, as well as other animal 



*Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1868, pp. 430, 431. 



