204 The Zoologist— May, 1866. 



Now surely what a rude skipper, in the days of James I., could 

 without any preparation accomplish, this Society ought to have uo 

 great difficulty in effecting ; and I trust that the example may not be 

 lost upon those who control our operations. From inquiries I have 

 made, I find it is quite the exception for any year to pass without an 

 opporunity of capturing alive one or more young examples of 

 Trichechus rosniarus occurring to the twenty or thirty ships which 

 annually sail from the northern parts of Norway, to pursue this animal 

 in the Spitsbergen seas. It has several times happened that young 

 walruses ihiis taken are brought to Hamnierfest; but, the voyage ended, 

 they are sold to the first purchaser, generally for a very trifling sum, 

 and, their food and accommodation not being duly considered, ihey of 

 course soon die. Lord Dufferin bought one which had been taken to 

 Bergen, and succeeded in bringing it alive to Ullapool;* and Mr. 

 Lamont mentions another which he saw in the possession of Captain 

 Erichsen.t In making an attempt to place a live walrus in our 

 Gardens, I do not think we ought to be 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 corrobo- 

 rates 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, 1 think, manifest. To the general 

 public perhaps the most permanently attractive animals exhibited in 

 our Gardens are the hippopotamuses and the seals. What then would 

 be the case of 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 consideration 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 de- 

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

 when Trichechus rosmarus will be as extinct in the Spitsbergen seas 

 as Rhyiina gigas is in those of Behring's Straits. 1 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 

 certainly abundant about Bear Island : ihey are spoken of there, as 

 " lying like hogges upon heaps " by the old writer 1 have before 

 quoted ; yet for the last thirty years probably not one has been seen 



* 'LeUers from Hi(;li Lalitiult-s,' pp.387— 389. 

 f ' SeabODS with ilic Sci-HnrsL-s^,' pj>. 2i>, 27. 



