38 SEALS AND WHALES OF THE BRLTISH SEAS. 



water, holds the young one between her fore-fins."* Since Cook's time the 

 Walrus has learned to fear man, its only enemy except the Polar Bear, and 

 is more difficult to approach. When wounded, or its young in danger, it has 

 been known fiercely to attack the boats sent for its capture, striving to over- 

 turn them, and piercing their sides with its tu^ks : many serious accidents 

 have been the result. 



The number of Walruses killed annually by the Norwegian and Russian 

 hunters is very considerable ; probably nearly an equal number are wounded 

 and lost. As the female produces only a single young one at a birth, which is 

 said to remain with the mother nearly two years, " until its tusks are grown 

 long enough to be used in grubbing up the shell mud at the sea-bottom," it will 

 readily be imagined that the destruction is greatly in excess of the production, 

 and that they are rapidly decreasing in numbers. A communication in 

 the i^z>/^ of March 27th, 1880 (p. 381), received from St. Francisco, points out 

 even more serious consequences resulting from the reckless destruction of the 

 Walrus than the mere extermination of a species, itself a matter of no small 

 regret. " If," says the writer, " the whalers reach Behring Strait before the 

 ice breaks up, they remain on the coast, and often hunt the Walrus for weeks 

 together, with startling and serious results. Last year's campaign was con- 

 sidered successful, as about 11,000 Walruses were secured, most of them 

 within the Arctic Sea. But to attain this result, between thirty afid forty 

 thousand animals were killed, so that only one-third of the number destroyed 

 were actually utilised. There can be no doubt as to the ultimate consequence 

 of such glaring imprudence ; but last year they were so painfully apparent as 

 to touch even the hearts of those who occasioned them. Not that the whalers 

 were moved to compassion by the victims themselves, but by the sufferings of 

 the human beings who were deprived of their chief souce of subsistence. The 



* Cook's Last Voyage, vol. ii. p. 458, edition 1784. 



