90 ODOBiENUS EOSMARUS ATLANTIC WALRUS. 



in respect to the use of its limbs, it occupies an intermediate 

 place between tbe Pinnipeds and the ordinary four-footed Mam- 

 mals, among which latter its less ijliant feet give it the appear- 

 ance of a cripple. If we should call, he says, the Seal a crawler 

 or slider, we should have to term the Walrus a waddler, since in 

 walking it throws its plump body to the right and left. Here we 

 have fairly described, for the first time, the flexibility of the ex- 

 tremities, the bending of the hind feet sometimes forward, 

 sometimes backward, and the free turning of the fore feet, 

 although an allusion was made to this by Vorstius* two centu- 

 ries before, yet the fact of flexibility remained generally unre- 

 cognized till 1853, when a young living specimen reached London. 

 Von Baer points out the fallacy of Sir Everard Home's notion 

 that the feet of the Walrus are provided with suction -discs, and 

 the " blowing " of the Walrus mentioned by Martens, v^ho de- 

 scribed it as throwing water from its nostrils like a whale. 



Following this chapter on its external features, movements, 

 temperament, behavior, etc., is an interesting dissertation of 

 some twenty or more pages on the domesticability of the marine 

 mammals in general, which is devoted largely to a history of 

 the behavior of the Seals in captivity, with a short notice of 

 the different examples of the Walrus, the Sireniaus, and the 

 smaller Cetaceans that had been observed in confinement. The 

 next thirty pages are given to a discussion of the geograph- 

 ical distribution of the Walruses, the treatment of which subject 

 is marked by the same x)ains-taking research that characterizes- 

 the other parts of this learned monograph. He shows that 

 Walruses are confined to two widely separated habitats, and 

 not, as previously supposed, found all along the Arctic coasts. 

 He describes them as limited to two regions, an eastern and a 

 western, the first including the northwestern coast of jSTorth 

 America from the Peninsula of Aliaska northward, and the 

 corresponding parts of the neighboring Asiatic coast. To the 

 eastward he could trace them only to the vicinity of Point Bar- 

 row, and to the westward only to a few degrees beyond East 

 Cape. 



The western region, he affirmed, embraces only the Arctic 

 coast of Europe eastward to the mouth of the Jenesei Eiver, 



* "Pedes anteriores antrorsum, posteriores retrorsuin spectabant cnm in- 

 grederetur," says Vorstius as quoted hj De Laet (see antea, p. 37). The Mnd 

 feet are also represented as turned forward in Hessel Gerard's figure, pub- 

 lished in 1613 (see jwsfea). 



