SYNOPSIS OF PINNIPEDS. 369 



Sea on tlie one side and tlieir merciless enemies on the other. The 

 result can not admit of any doubt Its numbers are appa- 

 rently decreasing- with woeful rapidity. The time is certainly not very 

 fjir distant when the Trichcehus rosmarus will be as extinct in the Spitz- 

 bergen seas as Rhytina gigas (Steller's sea-cow) is in those of Bering's 

 Straits." (Proc. Zool. Soc., London, 1804, p. 500.) 



As late as 1875 about a dozen sailing vessels were engaged regularly 

 in hunting the walrus between Cape Kanine and the mouth of the 

 Kara Kiver. (Rep. U. S. Commis. Fish and Fisheries, Ft. iii, 1876, p. 

 5f>.) The ISTorwegian sealers and whalers have continued the slaughter 

 as oppitrtunity favored, the catch in the Jan Mayen se: s, 

 from 1878 to*1881, averaging about 430 walruses per J'"> ^'^^v™ Seas. 

 year. (Bull. U. S. Fish Commission, vi, 1886, p. 212. 



According to Mr. Thomas Southwell's annual "Notes on the (British) 

 Seal and Whale Fishery," i)ublishedin theZoiUogist. 1883 to 18!)2, Wal- 

 rus hunting is still incidentally carried on by tlie whalers in Davis 

 Straits and Cumberland Gulf. In his account of the 

 season of 1885 he states that " about one hundred and Davis straits. 

 ninety walrus" were killed by the Davis Strait whalers. Respecting 

 the status of the Atlantic Walrus ;it this date, he makes the following- 

 interesting statements: " The Greenland vessels rarely meet with the 

 v/alrus, as it is pretty well exterminated at Spitzbergen by the Norwe- 

 gians; an occasional solitary individual, however, which has become 

 carnivore us and wandered far from his native shore in search of seals, 

 is sometimes met with far out at sea. At Franz Josef Land, according 

 to Mr. Leigh Smith, they are veiy numerous, and I am also informed 

 that in Frobisher Straits they are still plentiful; moreover, on botii 

 shores of Davis Straits, owing to the whalers being in too great a hurry 

 to leach the north water to stop to hunt them systematically, they aie 

 still abundant." (Southwell, Zoologist, 1886, pp. 101, 102.) He reports 

 the capture of 320 walruses by the Greenlancl whalers in 1886; about 

 500 in 1887, 311 in 1888, 312 in 1889, 90 in 1890, and 215 in 1891. 



2. rAciFic Walrus. Odohenus ohesus (111.). — The home of the Pa- 

 citic Avalrus is the islands and coasts of Bering- and , 



the Arctic seas. It formerly occurred in considerable 

 numbeis as far south as the Aleutian chain, and probably passed, at 

 times, somewhat to the southward of these islands. It was once abun- 

 dant at the Pribilof Islands, and at St. Mathews, St. Lawrence, Nuni- 

 vak, Diomede, and other islands in Bering Sea, and on the Alaskan 

 coast at Kotzebue and Norton sounds, Bristol Bay, and eastward to 

 Point Barrow. On the eastern and northern coasts of Asia it formerly 

 ranged from Karaginskoi Island, in about latitude 60°, thence north- 

 ward and westward to about the mouth of the Kolyma River. 



The walrus has always been an important animal to the natives of 

 the coasts it frequented, by whom many were annually 

 killed for their flesh, hides, and tusks, the flesh being ^^^s of wairus. 

 used for food, the skins for covering their summer habitations, for plank- 

 ing their baidarkas, for harness for their dog teams and lines for their 

 fishing gear, and the tusks for various implements and for purposes of 

 trade. (Scammon, Marine Mammalia, p. 180.) They, however, killed 

 so few as not to seriously decrease their numbers. As late as 1821 

 herds einbracing thousands of inilividuals, it is re- 

 ported on good authority, were seen in Bering Sea. Wau-us in Bering 

 According to Captain Scammoii, as late as 1873, "in- Ian cMst"'' *''" ^^■'" 

 numerable herds still resort in the summer months to ' 

 dilferent ])oints on the southern or central coasts of Alaska, particularly 

 47 



