WALRUS. 163 



in length, and yielded two barrels of blubber. A second 

 example was killed in the summer of 1825 on the island of 

 Edday, in the Orkneys ; while two years later a third is stated 

 to have been seen in Hoy Sound. A fourth vvas killed in the 

 spring of 1841 on the island of East Haskar, near Harris; 

 while two others are reported to have been seen in the 

 Orkneys — the one in 1857^ and the other somewhere about 

 the same date. 



The discovery of a skull, now preserved in the Cambridge 

 Museum, in the peat near Ely, would seem to indicate that in 

 former times i he Walrus not only visited the shores of the 

 eastern coast, but that it ascended the larger rivers. Its 

 former occurrence on the same coast is confirmed by a lower 

 jaw dredged from the Dogger Bank (where teeth of the 

 Mammoth are so commonly obtained), now in the British 

 Museum. 



At a still earlier epoch, when the climate was probably 

 much colder than at the present day. Walruses (which have 

 been referred to an extinct species) appear to have been by no 

 means uncommon on our eastern coast, where they were 

 doubtless resident. Fragments of the tusks of these animals 

 have been disinterred not only from the so-called "forest-bed" of 

 Cromer, in Norfolk, but likewise from the still older Red Crag 

 of Suffolk and Essex, which belongs to the upper portion of 

 the Pliocene epoch. 



Habits. — In the case of animals like the Walrus, whose only 

 claim to be regarded as British rests on the occurrence of some 

 half-dozen stracr^lers which have wandered or been carried 

 from their northern home, our notice of habits will be of the 

 briefest. It may be mentioned, however, that Walruses are 

 essentially gregarious animals, which in former days con- 

 gregated on the ice or shores of the Arctic regions in herds 

 often comprising hundreds of individuals. Their food con- 



M 2 



