500 MR. A. NEWTON ON THE ZOOLOGY OF SPITSBERGEN. [Nov. 8, 
Now surely what a rude skipper, in the days of James I., could 
without any preparation accomplish, this Society ought to have no 
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 
opportunity of capturing alive one or more young examples of Tvi- 
chechus rosmarus occurring to the twenty or thirty ships which an- 
nually sail from the northern ports of Norway, to pursue this animal 
in the Spitsbergen seas. It has several times happened that young 
Walruses thus taken are brought to Hammerfest ; but, the voyage 
ended, they are sold to the first purchaser, generally for a very tri- 
fling sum, and, their food and accommodation not being duly con- 
sidered, they 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 Erichsent. 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 corroborates the account given by honest Master 
Welden of the ‘strange docilitie”’ of this beast ; and that ina 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 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 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 
* “Letters from High Latitudes,’ pp. 387-389. 
+ ‘Seasons with the Sea-Horses,’ pp. 26, 27. 
