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VI. On the Tusks of the Fossil Walrus, found hi the Bed Crag of Suffolk. By E. Rat 

 Lankester, M.A., F.B.S., F.L.S., Professor of Zoology and Comparative 

 Anatomy in University College, London. 



(Plate XXII.) 



Bead 6th May, 1880. 



IN the year 1S65 I described, iu a memoir published by the Geological Society of 

 London, the tusks of a large mammal closely resembling, if not identical with, those of 

 the living Walrus. Several large fragments of these tusks, obtained from the base 

 of the Suffolk " Crag," had come to my knowledge, when, in the summer of 1861, 1 was 

 shown a small fragment of a similar tusk by Professor P. J. van Beneden at Louvain. 

 This fragment had been obtained from the Antwerp Crag ; and at the time of my visit 

 Professor Van Beneden did not indicate to me what conclusion he had formed as to its 

 nature. Subsequently, in the autumn of 1861, Professor Van Beneden communicated 

 in a letter to me his conclusion that the fragment of a fossil tusk in his possession had 

 belonged to a "Walrus-like animal, for which he informed me that he intended to use 

 the generic term Trichecodon. 



Having myself in the meantime ascertained that the Suffolk specimens presented 

 all the essential structural features of the Walrus-tusk, I proceeded to figure and 

 describe them, adopting, with acknowledgment, the generic name suggested by Prof. 

 Van Beneden, and supplying a specific title : I named the fossil Walrus of the Suffolk 

 Crag Trichecodon Ruxleyi. At the same time I may point out that I was unable 

 to adduce any character in support of a generic distinction between the Walrus now 

 inhabiting the polar sea and that which lived in the Miocene period. It was therefore 

 only in response to Prof. Van Beneden's suggestion that the genus Trichecodon was 

 proposed ; and I am anxious now to withdraw my use of that term, and to refer 

 the Suffolk tusks to the genus Trichecus simply. The fossil Walrus of the Crag, 

 indicated by the fragments of tusks already made known, and by other more perfect 

 specimens to be described below, will therefore stand simply as Trichecus Huxleyi 

 (Lankester, sp., 1865). 



I am glad to take the present opportunity, when I am about to submit some 

 excellent drawings of two nearly complete tusks from Suffolk, of clearing up, as far as 

 I am concerned, a certain confusion which has arisen in connexion with the nomenclature 

 of the fossil Walruses of the Pliocene deposits of Suffolk and Belgium. A splendidly 

 illustrated memoir on the fossil remains of marine Carnivora obtained from the environs 

 of Antwerp has recently been published by Professor Van Beneden (' Annales du Musee 

 Royal d'Histoire Naturclle de Belgique,' tome i. 1877). In this work a large number of 

 bones belonging to various Walrus-like individuals are figured, and are referred by 

 Prof. Van Beneden to two genera, Trichecodon and Alachtherium. I am not anxious on 



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