GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. 79 



on the shores of the delta-islands of the Lena. Eespecting the 

 more easterly coast of the Siberian Ice Sea, he says it is cer- 

 tainly known that the Walruses of Behring's Sea extend west- 

 ward in great numbers to Koljutschin Island. Only the males, 

 however, reach this limit, the females not extending beyond the 

 vicinity of the mouth of the Kolyma Eiver.* 



It hence appears that about 1735 to 1739 Walruses were 

 met with as far eastward as the mouth of the Lena Eiver 5 but 

 Wrangell, nearly a century later, explored quite thoroughly 

 this whole region without meeting with them, and I have found 

 only one reference to their existence on the Siberian coast be- 

 tween the Kolyma and Jenesei Eivers later than those cited by 

 von Middendorff. 



According to a recent letter t from Professor Nordenskjold, of 

 the Swedish Northeast Passage Expedition, "two Walruses" 

 were seen in August, 1878, a little to the eastward of the Jenesei 

 Eiver, and that open water was found as far as the mouth of 

 the Lena. From this it would seem that there is nothing to 

 prevent, at least in favorable years, the W^alruses from passing 

 eastward to the mouth of the Lena. There still remains, how- 

 ever, a breadth of some thirty degrees of longitude (between 

 130 and 160) where as yet no Walruses have been seen. They 

 appear to have been only very rarely met with to the eastward 

 of the Jenesei (longitude 82 E.), and to be uncommon east of 

 the Gulf of Obi. 



At present the Atlantic Walrus ranges along the northeast- 

 ern coast of North America from Labrador northward to Ee- 

 pulse Bay and Prince Eegentfs Inlet, and along the shores of 

 Greenland $ in the Old World only about the islands and in 

 the icy seas to the northward of Eastern Europe and the neigh- 

 boring portions of Western Asia, where it rarely, if ever, now 

 visits the shores of the continent. 



On the eastern coast of North America, Walruses have been 

 met with as far north as explorers have* penetrated, and as far 

 as the Esquimaux live. They winter as far north as they can 

 find open water, retiring southward in autumn before the ad- 

 vance of the unbroken ice-sheet. Kane speaks of their remain- 

 ing in Eenssellaer Harbor (latitude 78 37') in 1853, till the sec- 

 ond week of September, when the temperature reached zero 

 of Fahrenheit. | 



*Von MiddcndorfFs Sibirische Reise, Bd. iv, 1867, pp. 935, 936. 

 t See Nature, vol. xix, p. 102, December 5, 1878. 

 \ Arctic Exploration, vol. i, p. 140. 



