ALASKA INDUSTRIES. 153 



LIFE HISTORY OF THE WALRUS. 



Voluminous writings relative to the walrus. — When I first 

 set out for the sea islands, from the Smithsonian Institution, in 1872, 

 I fancied tliat, as far as the walrus was concerned, I should have 

 nothing to learn, because of the literature on that subject which I 

 had read from the Congressional Library, viz : 



The curious histories written by Olaus Magnus, in 1555; by Gesner, 

 in 1558; by Martens, in 1G75; by Pennant, in 1781-1792; by Buffon, in 

 1785, and by Cuvier, in 181G, together with an almost innumerable list 

 of authors who have since contributed papers on the walrus and its 

 character to nearly all the learned associations of the Avorld. With 

 this imposing list of authorities in my mind, I thought I had reason 

 to believe that there was nothing about this pinniped which I should 

 find new, or even interesting to science. 



The walrus of Bering Sea. — When, therefore, looking for the 

 first time upon the walrus of Bering Sea, judge of mj^ astonishment 

 as I beheld the animal before me. It was a new species; it was a new 

 creature, or all that had been written by five hundred authors in regard 

 to the appearance and behavior of its Atlantic cousin was in error. 

 The natives who accompanied me were hurriedly summoned to my 

 side, called from their eager task of j)icking up birds' eggs. "Are 

 these walrus sick?" said I. They looked at me in astonishment; "No; 

 they are not." "Do they always look like that?" "Serovnah,"^ was 

 the answer. 



Such was my introduction to Rosmarus arcticus (Pallas), and the 

 occasion of my describing it in 1873, for the first time, as the walrus 

 of Bering Sea — a distinct and. separate animal, specifically, from its 

 congener of the North Atlantic, Odohmnus-rosmarus ( Allen). ^ 



Walrus on the Pribilof Islands. — In early days, when the 

 Pribilof Islands were first occupied by the Russians, report has it 

 that large numbers of these creatures frequented the entire coast line 

 of St. Paul Island, and many were found around St. George; but, 

 being relatively more timid than the sea lion in respect to the presence 



'Just the same. 



^ Allen, in reviewing the history of this species, cites the hesitating opinions of 

 Pennant, in 1792; of Shaw, in 1800; of F. Cuvier, in 1825; of Leidy, in 18G0, all of 

 whom suggest the specitic distinctness of the Bering Sea walrus, but give their 

 ideas clouded by expressed hints or mental reservations. He shows, however, that 

 Illiger, in 1811, formally recognized three varieties, but that this author gives 

 nowhere his reasons for so doing. He named them Tricltecus rosmariis for the 

 North Atlantic and T. ohesus and T. divergens for the Bering Sea region and 

 waters north of the straits thereof. Then Allen says, page 21, ''I have met with 

 nothing further touching this subject prior to Mr. H. W. Elliott's report on the seal 

 islands of Alaska, published in 1878," and he quotes it freely. Professor Allen 

 has, however, done the osteological part of the work so well in his History of 

 North American Pinnipeds that now I deem it finished. While Allen agrees with 

 me finally in my early determination of the Bering Sea walrus as a distinct spe- 

 cies from that of the Atlantic, he seems to base all of his belief upon the osteolog- 

 ical differentiation between them. I have had my faith in that one line of evi- 

 dence as to genera and species so sadly shaken by the amazing asymmetry and 

 differences in the skulls and skeletons of the fur seal which are bleaching ovit here 

 side by side, thousands and tens of thousands of them, that I feel better satisfied 

 with the characteristic external features of the pinnipeds, which are really more 

 fixed and exact among the hundreds of thousands on the Pribilof Islands. Per- 

 haps 10,000 skulls of Odohcpuus obe.'ius would show a great number ot examples 

 which could not alone by themselves be separated from types of O. ro>iniarns. 

 From my inspection of the wide range of variation presented in a large series of 

 Callorhinus and Eumetopias skulls, I do not have any hesitation in saying so. 



