138 



that Canadian and American fishermen had aided, a little over a cen- 

 tury ago, in its extermination on those islands, where its bones and 

 tusks still occur. According to tradition, it also inhabited some of 

 the harbors of Cape Breton Island, one of these harbors being called 

 Sea Cow Bay, and he was informed by a fisherman that its bones 

 may now be found abundantly on an islet near Cape Sable, Nova 

 Scotia, from fifteen to twenty feet above the sea. The walrus late in 

 the Glacial Period, lived on the coast of Maine, as he had seen a por- 

 tion of a tusk in the possession of a lady in Gardiner, Maine, near 

 whose house Sir Charles Lyell discovered it in a clay bank, associated 

 with the teeth of the bison. 



On the coast of Labrador the last walrus seen or heard of in the 

 Gulf of St. Lawrence, was killed at St. Augustine, thirty years ago. 

 Several were seen at Square Island, on the Atlantic coast of Labra- 

 dor, from fifteen to twenty years ago, and he had seen the head of a 

 young individual found floating dead in the drift ice off Belle Isle, 

 having probably fallen a victim to the harpoons of whalers in the Arc- 

 tic Ocean, and floated down the great Polar current. For a period of 

 at least fifty years, probably, the walrus has not bred south of Hud- 

 son's Straits. 



Mr. F. W. PUTNAM exhibited the skulls of several species of bears, 

 including a young polar, a large grisly, the common brown bear of 

 Asia, and the black bear of America, and compared the skulls with 

 that of the large polar bear presented by Capt. Perkins, pointing out 

 the characteristics as exhibited by the series of skulls, and calling 

 attention to the great confusion existing in regard to the species and 

 the diversified opinions of naturalists regarding them. He also ex- 

 hibited a molar tooth of a bear found in the shellheap at Goose Island, 

 and stated that it was impossible to say with certainty to which 

 species the tooth should be referred, though it was the last molar, a 

 tooth that had been considered as the most characteristic of the vari- 

 ous species. From its association it was probably that of a black 

 bear, yet it more closely resembled the corresponding tooth in the 

 skull of the Asiatic s|**fcimen on the table than any other, while the 

 size of the tooth would indicate that it had belonged to a polar bear. 



Dr. PACKARD remarked that the white bear occurred more com- 

 monly on the coast of Labrador than the walrus, and that remains 

 of it might be looked for in the Indian shellheaps of New England, 

 which it may have visited in early times, and as bones of it had been 

 reported as having been found in the Quaternary strata of Ireland, 

 its distribution on our north-eastern coast was of considerable inter- 

 est. The Labrador settlers call it the " water bear," and it not un- 

 frequently appears on the coast, brought down on the drift ice from 

 more northern latitudes. At Square Island, a locality situated be- 



