MAMMALS. 63 



Color uniform grizzly mouse-color, -with a tinge of olive-gray. Muz- 

 zle, crown, and irregular patches on back and fore flippers white. From 

 nose to eyes a black line crossing the head back of the eyes, forming a 

 perfect cross. Xails horn-blue, tipped with white. Iris dark brown. 

 Kose black. Muzzle wide ; lips full and fleshy, giving the animal a 

 bull-dog expression. Body long and slender. Beard pellucid, abundant, 

 white, stout, the bristles growing shorter from the eye toward the nos- 

 trils. Hind flippers large and heavy, looking disproportionate. The 

 hair rather short, but fine and somewhat woolly. There was interspersed 

 another kind of hair, stiff and of a steel-blue ; the next coat, I take it. 



The Eskimo are firm in the belief that the ogjook sheds its first coat 

 within the uterus of the mother. In this instance there was certainly 

 plenty of loose hair in the uterus; but the specimen had been dragged 

 some miles in its envelope over the rough ice, and banged around consid- 

 erably, besides having been kept three or four days in an Eskimo igloo 

 among a heap of decaying garbage, so it is not to be wondered at if the 

 hair was loose. There was little blubber on the specimen, and this was 

 thickly interspersed with blood-vessels. The intestines toward the anus 

 were filled with dung. The kidneys were very large, the heart remark- 

 ably so. The cartilaginous prolongation of the thorax, so prominent 

 in Pagomys fostidus, is wanting in this species. 



The ogjook is of great value to the Eskimo, who prize the skins very 

 highly. All their harnesses, sealing-lines, &c., are made from the raw 

 skins ; besides this, they make the soles of their boots, and sometimes 

 other portions of their dress, from the skin. In such localities as the 

 whalemen do not visit, and the natives are obliged to construct skin 

 boats, this seal is in great demand. It takes fifteen skins for an omiuak, 

 or skin boat, and these skins require renewing very often. The skin of 

 the back and belly dries unevenly, so the Eskimo skin the animal by 

 cutting it longitudinally along both sides, and drying the skin of the 

 upper and lower parts separately. It is a prevalent belief among whale- 

 men that seals' livers, and more especially those of this species, are poison- 

 ous; but I am inclined to rate this as imagination. We ate the livers 

 of all species we procured without any bad effects. 



13. Trichechus rosmarus, Linn6. 



"Awouk" and "Ivik," Cumberland Eskimo. 



The walrus is quite common about Cape Mercy and the southern waters 

 of Cumberland, but at the present day rarely strays far up the sound. 

 Their remains, however, are by no means rare, even in the Greater King- 



