430 Zoological Society : — 



discouraged by the bad luck which has attended our efforts in the 

 case of the larger marine Mammalia. Every person I have spoken 

 with on the subject corroborates the account given by honest Master 

 Welden of the " strange docilitie " of this beast ; and that in a mere 

 financial point of view the attempt would be worth undertaking is, I 

 think, manifest. To the general public perhaps the most perma- 

 nently attractive animals exhibited in our Gardens are the Hippopo- 

 tamuses and the Seals. What, then, would be the case with a species 

 like the Walrus, wherein the active intelligence of the latter is added 

 to the powerful bulk of the former ? There is also another con- 

 sideration why we should make the attempt. In a few years it is 

 probable that the difficulties of obtaining a live example of the 

 Walrus will be much greater. Its numbers are apparently decreasing 

 with woful rapidity. The time is certainly not very far distant when 

 Trichechus Rosmarus will be as extinct in the Spitsbergen seas as 

 Rhytina gigas is in those of Behring's Straits. I see no reason to 

 doubt the assertion, or perhaps it would be safer to say the inference, 

 that in former days Walruses habitually frequented the coasts of 

 Finmark ; in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries they were cer- 

 tainly abundant about Bear Island : they are spoken of there, as 

 "lying like hogges upon heaps" by the old writer I have before 

 quoted ; yet for the last thirty years probably 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. 



But to continue my story from this digression, which I hope, how- 

 ever, may not be without its use. On the 10th of August our two 

 ships again joined company ; and, finding it was useless attempting 

 either to get up the Stor Fjord or sail further to the eastward, we 

 again rounded the South Cape and made for the northward. The 

 season, however, being now so far advanced, our pilot declined the 

 responsibility of taking the yacht further north than Ice Fjord ; and 

 accordingly, after having to steer considerably to the westward to 

 avoid the heav}' ice which beset the coast about Horn Sound, we found 

 ourselves, on the afternoon of the 1 4th, once more at our old anchor- 

 age in Safe Haven. Here we remained another week, most of our 

 party finding plenty of occupation in deer-stalking ; but' I was not 

 able to add much to my stock of zoological knowledge. The deer 

 were now in magnificent condition, and nineteen were shot, making, 

 with those obtained the week the yacht was there in July, a total 

 of forty-seven. On the night of the 1 7th the salt water of the Haven 

 was frozen over, and two days afterwards the sun set. On the 

 morning of the 21st we weighed anchor, homeward-bound. On the 

 24th we spoke a Norwegian ^'^e^/, engaged in the fishing of Scymnus 

 borealisy an example of which was hauled up just as we passed*. 



* This fishery has of late years assumed considerable importance. The vessels 

 employed in it mostly do not go so far north, hut keep about midway between 

 Bear Island and tbe North Cape of Europe. There they anchor in deep water 

 with a light cable, which they cut if it conies on to blow suddenly. The Sharks 

 are caught with a baited hook at the end of a very long line. As soon as one is 



