1868.] MR. U. BROWN ON THE SEALS OF GREENLAND. 433 



fall into an error from seeing these teeth among the natives so far 

 south, if we did not know that they are bartered from the more 

 northern tribes. On the American Atlantic seaboard they come as 

 far south as the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and stragglers even further. 

 In Lord Shuldham's day they assembled on the Magdalene Islands in 

 that gulf, to the number of 7000 or 8000 ; and sometimes as many as 

 1 600 were killed (or rather slaughtered) at one onset by the hunters 

 who pursued them*. It has been killed several times on the British 

 coast ; and I suspect that it is not an unfrequent visitor to our less- 

 frequented shores. Perhaps not a few of the " Sea-horses " and 

 "Sea-cows" which every now and again terrify the fishermen on the 

 shores of the wild western Scottish lochs, and get embalmed among 

 their folklore, may be the Walrus. In addition to those already re- 

 corded I know of one which was seen in Orkney, in 1857, and 

 another the Shetland fishermen told me had been seen in the 

 Nor' Isles about the same time. There is, however, some ground 

 for believing that at one time it was, if not a regular member of our 

 fauna, at least a very frequent visitor. Hector Boece (or Boethius, 

 as his name has been Latinized), in his quaint ' Cronikles of 

 Scotland,' mentions it towards the end of the fifteenth century as 

 one of the regular inhabitants of our shores ; and old Roman his- 

 torians describe the horse-gear and arms of the ancient Britons as 

 ornamented with bright polished ivory. It is diflScult to suppose 

 that this could have been anything else but the carved tusks of the 

 Walrus. It is not, however, without the bounds of possibility that 

 this might have been some of the African Elephants' ivory which the 

 Phoenician traders bartered for tin with the natives of the Cassite- 

 rides. Except for its occasional movements from one portion of its 

 feeding-ground to the other, the Walrus cannot be classed among 

 the migratory animals. In Greenland it is found all the year round, 

 but not south of Rifkol, in lat. 65°. In an inlet called Irsortok 

 it collects in considerable numbers, to the terror of the natives who 

 have to pass that way ; and not unfrequeutly kayakers who have 

 gone " express," have to return again, being afraid of the threatening 

 aspect of " Awuk." A voyager has well remarked that " Awuk " is 

 the lion of the Danish Eskimo ; they always speak of him with the 

 most profound respect I It has been found as far north as the Eskimo 

 live, or explorers have gone. On the western shores of Davis's 

 Strait, it is not uncommon about Pond's, Scott's, and Home Bays, 

 and is killed in considerable numbers by the natives. It is not 

 now found in such numbers as it once was ; and no reasonable man 

 who sees the slaughter to which it is subject in Spitzbergen and 

 elsewhere can doubt that its days are numbered. It has already 

 become extinct in several places where it was once common. Its 

 utter extinction is a foregone conclusion. Von Baer has studied 

 its distribution in the Arctic sea ; and, so far as they go, his memoir 

 and map may be relied on ; both, however, require considerable 

 modifications f. 



* Apud Pennant, ' Arctic Zoology,' p. 149. 



t Memoires de 1' Academic de St. Petersbourg, t. iv. p. 97, t. 4 (1836). 



