84 THE SCOTTISH NATURALIST 
The records, grouped in periods of ten and of twenty 
years, are as follows :— 
Numbers in Numbers in 
Years. ten-year twenty-year 
periods. periods. 
1811-1820 3 \ 6 
1821-1830 33 
1831-1840 3 \ 6 
1841-1850 3 
1851-1860 4 \ 6 
1861-1870 2 
1871-1880 2 \ 
18381-1890 fo) 
1891-1900 2 \ 
IQOI-1910 I 3 
IQII-1920 I I 
It will be seen that while each decade up to 1870 yielded 
an average of three Walruses in British waters, the average 
after 1870 fell to about one a decade, or that, while each 
twenty-year period before 1870 yielded six individuals, only 
six altogether have been seen in the fifty years since that 
date. Put in another way: while previous to 1870 a Walrus 
appeared in British waters on an average every three and 
a third years, since 1870 the average has fallen to one in 
eight and a third years. 
So far as the available statistics show, there has been no . 
gradual falling off in numbers, such as would occur under 
the slow interference of most natural agencies, How, then, 
can the break about 1870 be accounted for? An examina- 
tion of the results of seal-hunting suggests an answer to 
the question. 
In the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Walruses 
were hunted and slaughtered in vast numbers on the northern 
coast of the mainland of Europe, where, in Finmark, they 
were said in 1604 to “lye like hogges upon heapes.” Long 
since they deserted these shores of Norway, only to be 
tracked and slaughtered as they retreated northwards before 
the hunters. First, Bear Island, 280 miles north of the 
North Cape, became the centre of destruction, and then, 
when the Walruses here had been exterminated, the centre 
shifted northwards to the Thousand Isles, S.E. of Spitsbergen, 
