1 30 MAMMALS. 



Mr. Alfred Newton, who has visited Spitzbergen still more recently, states that their numhers 

 continue to decrease with woeful rapidity, being now almost confined to Spitzbergen and the 

 Archipelago of Islands about it. " Now they are hemmed in by the packed ice on the one side, 

 and tlieir merciless enemies on the other. The result cannot admit of a doubt."* "Fortunately 

 for the persecuted Walruses, however," says Mr. Lament, "these latter districts (those to the 

 north of Spitzbergen) are only accessible in ojDcn seasons, or perhaps once in every three or four 

 summers, so that they get a little breatliing time there to breed and replenish their numbers, or 

 undoubtedly the next twenty or thirty years would witness the total extinction of Rosmarus 

 Trichechus on the coasts of the islands of Northern Europe." He adds that there is no doubt 

 that many of the Seals and Sea-horses frequenting the east part of the Spitzbergen coast come 

 down from the north-east, and I have often susj^ected that Gillies' Land (a hilly country like 

 Spitzbergen, which lies sixty or seventy miles to the north-east of Spitzbergen), or some other 

 unkno-\iTi covmtry in that direction, must be the grand emporium which supplies them. A great 

 many are known to exist abovit the north-east corner of Spitzbergen, which is rarely accessible. 

 No vessel has ever succeeded in circiminavigating Spitzbergen ; and although separate voj'ages 

 have been made which overlap each other in this direction, still very little indeed is known about 

 those jiarts of the Spitzbergen Archipelago marked in the charts as Nord ost Land and New 

 Friesland.f 



Like other Seals the Walrus migrates each j'ear. Little is known as to the course of their 

 migration, beyond that it is to the north in summer, and to the south in winter. 



The most remarkable fact regarding their distribution is that it is not circmnpolar. It is a 

 common belief that the animal inhabits all the northern coasts. It is not so, however. Yon Baer, 

 who made a minute inquiry into the subject, and published the result J with a chart noticing every spot 

 where they had been found (from which I have borrowed the map of their distribution — Map 28* ), 

 showed that thej^ have two liabitats widely separated from each other. Spealdng roughly, these habitats 

 are the part of the Arctic Sea north of the Atlantic, and the part of it north of the Pacific, leaving two 

 great blanks, one on the north of Asia, and the other on the north of America. They are met with 

 in the north of Hudson's Bay and in Baffin's Bay, and at the eastern entrance to Lancaster Sound, 

 but they do not apjicar ever to make the north-west j)assage, or to penetrate by it to the northern 

 shores of North America. No one has ever seen them there. They occur rather sparingly on the 

 east and west coasts of Greenland. They are not found in Iceland, although an occasional 

 wanderer has sometimes come to it as a guest. They never come near the north coast of Europe 

 now. Bear Island knows them no more. We have seen how far they still frequent Sijitzbergen 

 and its islands. They are foimd, also, all along the western, or rather north-western, coast of 

 Nova Zembla, but not on its inner or south-eastern shores ; but, what is curious enough, they have 

 penetrated round the south of the island, and occur along the northern coast of Asia, facing the 

 south-eastern exj)osure of Nova Zembla, where, however, they are not met with. They do not follow 

 this coast, however, further than the River Jenesei ; beyond that there is an inunense tract without 

 them. They reappear, however, at the East Cape, or Cape Vostotchni, near Bhering's Straits and 

 facing Point Barrow (the two Capes, Cape Vostotchni and Point Barrow forming respectively the 

 eastern and western door-posts of Bhering's Straits on the north), and are there found occupying 



* Newton, iu '■ Troc. Zoo!. Soc," 1S04. p. 500. % Von Baer, iu " St. Pctersbui-g Mem. Acad. Scient. 



t Lamoxt, op. cit. pp. 177, 182. Imp. (jtb Scr. vol. iv. 



