1824.] Royal Society. 307 



A letter to the President was read, from Sir E. Home, Bart. 

 VPRS. entitled " Some curious Facts respecting the Walrus 

 and Seal, discovered in the Examination of Specimens brought 

 Home by the late Expeditions, from the Polar Circle." 



As the late various expeditions to the northern regions had 

 been planned, primarily, by the President and Council of the 

 Royal Society, Sir Everard Home wished to lay before the 

 Society some curious facts which he had ascertained in the 

 examination of some specimens brought home by them. This 

 he was desirous of doing before the officers who are to proceed 

 on the new expeditions should have left our coasts, in order that 

 they might know that their exertions were important to science 

 in various respects, besides the grand objects of their 

 researches ; and that they might likewise know that the pickle or 

 brine in which provisions are preserved at sea is well adapted 

 to the preservation of the internal parts of animals, preserving 

 them in a better state for examination, dissection, and injection, 

 than when they have been long steeped in spirits. 



The first discovery Sir Everard had to state was, that the 

 hind flipper or foot of the walrus is provided with means for 

 enabling the animal to walk in opposition to gravity precisely 

 analogous to those possessed by the fly, and the use of which 

 could not have been suspected, had not the previous discovery 

 been made respecting the latter animal, as described in the 

 Phil. Trans, for 1816. Sir Everard at once recognized this 

 structure on seeing a mutilated foot of the walrus, and, in con- 

 sequence, had requested his friend Capt. Sabine to procure him 

 a specimen of the animal, which Capt. S. had accordingly 

 done, with the aid of the assistant-surgeon of the vessel in 

 which he sailed. The examination of this specimen showed, 

 that in the hind foot of the walrus there is a cup for enabling 

 the animal to produce a vacuum, and thus to walk in opposition 

 to gravity exactly like the two cups with which the fly's foot is pro- 

 vided. The apparatus in the latter required magnifying 100 times 

 to make the cups distinctly visible, but in the walrus it was dimi- 

 nished four times to bring it within the compass of a quarto plate. 

 The author, when writing his former papers on the fly's means 

 of progression, had not been able to determine the use of the 

 two points in the foot of that animal ; Mr. Adams had called 

 them pickers, and had supposed that they were inserted in the 

 cavities of the surface over which the animal was walking, and 

 thus retained it in opposition to gravity, — an opinion which 

 Sir Everard Home deemed undeserving of consideration ; 

 though he could not assign any use to the points in question. 

 In the foot of the walrus, however, it is evident that the two 

 toes which answer to the points in that of the fly are used for the 

 purpose of bringing the web closely down upon the surface 

 traversed, so as to enable the animal to form a more perfect 

 vacuum, and that the air is re-admitted on their being lifted up. 



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