GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. 73 



are sent out to harry the Walrus ; as a consequence every sea- 

 son there is greater difficulty in obtaining a cargo for two rea- 

 sons, those animals which have ventured into what was safe feed- 

 ing-ground last year meet their enemy, and half are killed, while 

 the other half escaping will be found next year a step farther 

 away. This intelligent retreating of the Walrus before a supe- 

 rior enemy will, I believe, preserve the species after its scarcity 

 in accessible waters renders it no longer an object of sport and 

 commerce. That the Walrus, ... is being driven from every 

 district where the hand of man is felt, is certain."* 



Mr. Alfred Newton, writing in 1864, respecting their former 

 presence on the coasts of Finmark, and their distribution at that 

 date, observes : " I see no reason to doubt the assertion, or per- 

 haps it would be safer to say the inference, that in former days 

 Walruses habitually frequented the coasts of Finrnark. In the 

 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries they were certainly abund- 

 ant about Bear Island ; they are spoken of there as i lying like 

 hogges upon heaps,' [t] . . . ; yet for the last thirty years prob- 

 ably not one has been seen there. Now they are hemmed in by the 

 packed ice of the Polar Sea on the one side and their merciless 

 enemies on the other. The result cannot admit of any doubt. 

 .... Its numbers are apparently decreasing with woful ra- 

 pidity. The time is certainly not very far distant when the 

 Tricliechus rosmarus will be as extinct in the Spitzbergen seas 

 as Ehytina yiyas is in those of Behring's Straits." J 



In Eichard Chancellor's account of his " disco verie of Mos- 

 covia," in 1553-1554, we read : u To the North part of that Coun- 

 trey are the places where they have their Furres, as Sables, 

 Marterns, greese Bevers, Foxes white, blacke, and red, Minkes, 

 Ermines, Minivers, and Harts. There are also a fishes teeth, 

 which fish is called a Morsse. The takers thereof dwell in a 

 place called Postesora, which bring them upon Harts to Lam- 

 pas to sell, and from Lampas carrie them to a place called Col- 

 mogro, where the high Market is holden on Saint Nicolas day." 

 On Hondius's map of Eussia accompanying this account Lam- 

 pas is placed on the White Sea, near the mouth of the Dwina 

 Eiver. 



* Yachting in the Arctic Seas, 1876, pp. 59, 60. 



t [ " It seemed very strange to us," says Jonas Poole, in his account of his 

 visit to Cherie Island in 1604, "to see such a multitude of monsters of the 

 Sea, lye like hogges upon heapes." Purchas Ms Pilgrimes, vol. iii, p. 557.] 



t Proc. Zool. Soc. Loud., 1864, p. 500. 



Purchas his Pilgrimes, vol. iii, pp. 213, 214. 



