SEALS — WALRUS 269 



Like its relative the common seal, the ringed seal (Phoca 

 Seals. 



foetida) inhabits the Arctic, the North Atlantic, and the North Pacific 



Oceans, but does not range so far south, although occasionally appearing off 



the British coasts. To the same genus belongs the Greenland, or harp, seal (P. 



grcenlandica), which, like the last, has a white or yellowish white coat when born, 



but when full grown is yellowish white with a characteristic black mark on the 



back from which it derives its second English name. It is this species, and not 



the common seal, which now forms the chief object of pursuit of the sealers who 



approach the Arctic regions from the Atlantic. 



The third member of the group, the bearded seal (P. barbata), is by far the 

 largest of the Arctic forms, old males attaining a length of 10 feet. It is further 

 distinguished from its kindred by the broad muzzle, arched forehead, small teeth, 

 and the long middle toe on the front flippers. Associating in large herds, this 

 seal ranges as far south as Iceland and Labrador, and has been seen in the north 

 of Great Britain. A very different animal is the crested or bladder-nosed seal 

 (Cystophora cristata), which takes its name from the dilatable sac on the nose of 

 the adult males, this sac communicating with the chamber of the nose. This 

 species seldom ranges farther south than Newfoundland, and is rarely or never 

 found on land, being essentially an ice-seal. The hooded seal is a migratory 

 species. In summer the big herds are found along the south-east coast of Green- 

 land, and in February and March these seals appear in countless numbers on the 

 winter-formed ice-floes off the Labrador and Newfoundland coasts, both in the 

 open Atlantic and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Sometimes large herds become 

 imprisoned upon the floes, through long-continued winds in one direction which 

 pack the ice and cut off their retreat. When this occurs and the seals are exposed 

 to the rays of the sun, their skins burn and crack. They are then valueless, and 

 the animals are not molested by the sealers. 



This species is much fiercer and bolder than other seals, and will often defend 

 itself with such courage that the Eskimos by whom it is hunted in their frail 

 "kayaks" are exposed to considerable danger, especially since the males are 

 protected from the clubs of their enemies by the inflated appendage on 

 the head. 



Those well-known Arctic animals, the walruses, are represented 



Wnlrus 



by two distinguishable forms, the one (Odobcenus rosmarus) 

 inhabiting the North Atlantic and the other the North Pacific. Both are so 

 nearly allied that it appears best to regard the latter merely as a local race of the 

 former. The formidable upper tusks, which form one of the most conspicuous 

 features of the walruses, are longer, thicker, and more inclined towards each other 

 in the Pacific than in the Atlantic form. These weapons appear to be chiefly 

 employed in raking up from the sea-bottom the bivalve molluscs on which these 

 animals mainly subsist. The bivalves which supply most of the food are those 

 known as My a truncata and Saxicava rugosa, and for crushing their hard shells 

 the blunt-crowned cheek-teeth of the walrus are admirably adapted. In addition 

 to bivalves, walruses also consume fishes and crustaceans ; and with their animal 

 food they also swallow, perhaps unintentionally, large quantities of seaweed. 

 Three centuries ago the Atlantic walrus occasionally wandered so far south as the 



