From the middle of the sixteenth century until the 

 middle of the nineteenth, the walrus has figured in 

 many fantastic ways of which this armor-wrapped 

 creature with swinish head is a typical example 



The walruses constitute 

 one of the three families of 

 aquatic carnivorous mam- 

 mals, the pinnipeds or fin- 

 footed animals, the other 

 two families being the 

 common seals and the 

 eared seals. The wal- 

 ruses are similar in limb 

 structure to the eared 

 seals, that is the fur seals 

 and sea lions, but have 

 much thicker bodies and 

 are very different in the 

 form of the skull modi- 

 fied to afford support for the upper canine teeth, which as enormously 

 developed tusks, form the most striking feature of these ponderous beasts. 



Unlike fur seals, sea lions and the true seals, the walruses are at present 

 restricted to coasts and islands situated north of the Arctic circle; in fact 

 they never ranged very far southward. About the middle of the six- 

 teenth century the Atlantic walrus was found as far south as Nova Scotia, 

 but during the last half of the eighteenth century they were practically 

 exterminated from the various islands to which they resorted in great 

 numbers in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and from Sable Island off the southern 

 coast of Nova Scotia where thousands were killed annually for their oil, 

 hides and tusks. For the last hundred years only stragglers have been 

 seen as far south as the Labrador coast. 



On the other side of the Atlantic the walrus in early times ranged south 

 as far as the coast of Scotland and the Hebrides, but apparently not in 

 large numbers, their main resort being the islands north of Norway especially 

 Bear Island, Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla, where the same war of extermi- 

 nation has been carried on for more than three centuries till now only a 

 few are left of the former great herds. 



Fossil remains of the 

 Atlantic walrus have been 

 found on the coasts of 

 New Jersey, Virginia and 

 South Carolina, showing 

 that in glacial times it 

 must have ranged much 

 farther south than the 

 points where it was 

 found by the earh T ex- The first truthful figure of walrus, by Gerard, 1613. 



plorers of North America and the only one for the next 250 years ' until iu 1853 a 



** " living walrus was brought to London and the truth of 



Remains of walruses, or the Gerard picture was proved 



41 



