SEALS AND WHALES OF THE BRITLSH SEAS. 



35 



bestowed upon it, both as regards food and accommodation. This last was 

 captured by the whale-ship Arctic, on the 28th of August, 1867, in lat 69° 

 N. and long. 64° W., and brought to Dundee, whence it was conveyed by 

 Mr. Bartlett to the Society's Gardens. The captain of the Arctic saw two 

 or three hundred walruses basking upon the ice, and sent out his boats to 

 the attack : among the killed was an old female followed by her young one ; 

 the latter was taken on board and eventually brought to England. 



Although now confined to the icy seas of the Arctic circle, the Walrus 

 was probably not uncommon on our shores in times long past The skull 

 is said to have been found in the peat near Ely, and Hector Boece, in his 

 'Cronikles of Scotland,' mentions it as a regular inhabitant of our shores in the 

 end of the 15th century : in the present century it has occurred several times, 

 although it must be considered as a very rare straggler, sadly out of its latitude. 

 Wallace says that its fossil remains have been found in Europe as far south 

 as France, and in America probably as far south as Virginia, and it was 

 common in the Gulf of St. Lawrence so late as 1770 (Leith Adams). In 

 recent times it has retreated before its great enemy, man, from the northern 

 coasts of Scandinavia to the circumpolar ice of Asia, America, and Europe, 

 sometimes, but rarely, reaching as far south as lat. 60°. In Smith's Sound 

 the Walrus does not appear to move further north than Cape Frazer, the 

 meeting-place of the polar and southern tides : at this point Captain Feilden 

 saw a single example. Whenever met with, it is the object of ruthless 

 persecution, and is rapidly and surely becoming exterminated wherever man 

 can reach it; and but for its ice-loving habits, which render its present 

 strongholds always difficult, and sometimes impossible, of access, it would 

 doubtless long ere this have become extinct. 



Recently it has been met with on our shores, according to Bell, on the 

 coast of Harris in 1817; in the Orkneys in 1825 ; one was seen in 1827 in 

 Hoy Sound, but not captured; and in 1841 one was killed near Harris. 



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