MATERNAL AFFECTION. '151 



and the wounds inflicted on them served only to increase 

 their ferocity."* 



Mothers, when their offspring are in peril, are espe- 

 cially courageous. "The female," says Captain Cook, 

 " will defend her young to the very last, and at the 

 expense of her own life, . whether in the water or on 

 the ice. Nor will the calf quit the dam, though she 

 be dead ; so that if you kill one, you are sure of the other." 

 And during the third voyage of the great navigator, 

 when the Resolution and Discovery were returning from 

 Behring's Straits, it is mentioned : " In the afternoon 

 we hoisted out the boats, and sent them in pursuit of the 

 sea-horses that surrounded us. Our people were more 

 successful than they had been before, returning with 

 three large ones and one young. The gentlemen who 

 went in this party were witnesses of several instances of 

 parental affection in these animals. On the approach of 

 our boat towards the ice, they all took their cubs under 

 their fins, and endeavoured to escape with them into the 

 sea. Several whose young were killed and wounded, and 

 were left floating on the surface, rose again and carried 

 them down, sometimes just as our people were going to 

 take them into the boat ; and they might be traced bearing 

 them to a great distance in the water, which was coloured 

 with their blood. We afterwards observed them bringing 

 them up at times above the surface, as if for air, and again 

 diving under it with a dreadful bellowing. The female, 

 in particular, whose young had been destroyed and taken 

 into the boat, became so enraged that she attacked the 

 cutter, and struck her tusks through the bottom of it." 

 The walrus is readily domesticated. A young one 



* When people are thus furiously assailed by walruses, the best defence 

 is said to be sea sand, which, being thrown into their eyes, occasions partial 

 blindness, and obliges them to disperse. 



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