204 SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF MAMMALIA. 



rest attempted to regain the sea. As is the case with 

 the whale, the annual slaughter made among these ani- 

 mals for the sake of their oil, and of their tusks, which 

 are of the finest ivory, has thinned their numbers, or 

 driven them from haunts where they formerly abounded, 

 to seek shelter in more inaccessible localities. That they 

 are not without courage or sympathy for their wounded 

 companions there is ample testimony. When Martens 

 wounded one, others speedily surrounded the boat, and, 

 whilst some endeavoured to pierce it with their tusks, 

 others raised themselves out of the water and endeavoured 

 to board her. Captain Phipps, afterwards Lord Mul- 

 grave, relates that, when near a low flat island opposite 

 Way gat's Straits, in 1773, two of the officers went in a 

 boat in pursuit of sea-horses. They fired at one and 

 wounded it. The animal was alone when it was wounded, 

 but, diving into the sea, it brought back a number of 

 others. They made a united attack upon the boat, 

 wrested an oar from one of the men, and were with diffi. 

 culty prevented from staving or oversetting her ; but a 

 boat from the Carcass joining that from the Racehorse, 

 they dispersed. Captain Phipps adds that one of that 

 ship's boats had before been attacked in the same manner 

 off Moffen Island. Sir Edward Parry encountered about 

 two hundred in Fox's Channel, lying piled as usual over 

 each other on the loose drift-ice. A boat's crew from 

 both the Fury and Hecla went to attack them, but they 

 made a desperate resistance, some with their cubs 

 mounted on their backs, and one of them tore the planks 

 of a boat in two or three places. Their parental affec- 

 tion is great. Captain Cook states that on the approach 

 of the boats, which were hoisted out to attack them in 

 Behring's Straits, all the walruses took their cubs under 

 their fins, and endeavoured to escape with them from 

 the ice into the sea. Several whose young were killed 

 and wounded, and were left floating on the surface, rose 

 again and carried them down, sometimes just as the 

 people were going to take them into the boat ; and they 

 might be traced bearing them to a great distance through 



