HORNS AND TUSKS 305 



the grain of this "walrus bone" was in his estimation "some- 

 what more yellow than the Ivorie." A Mr. Alexander 

 Woodson, of Bristol, "my old friend, an excellent mathema- 

 tician and a skilful Phisitian," showed him a walrus tooth a 

 half-yard long, and assured him that he had found this 

 material to be "as soveraigne against poyson as any Uni- 

 corne's home."* 



The name walrus, Dutch wallruSy has the same significance 

 as the chronological prototype in Skandinavian, rosmhvalr 

 (*'horsewhale") , only the order of the two elements is reversed. 

 The Latinized form rosmarus is from the same source, for the 

 early French settlers in Canada it was "la bete a grande 

 dent," the "animal with the great tooth." The Russian 

 name morzh furnishes the form "morse" used quite often in 

 English a hundred or more years ago, and its likeness in sound 

 to the Latin mors, "death," induced some sixteenth-century 

 writers to connect it with this, supposing that the creature's 

 dangerous character had caused the bestowal of this name.f 



As far back as the third century, Solinus (Polyhistor, Chap. 

 XXXV) makes mention of sword-hilts made by the Irish 

 from the teeth of a marine animal, perhaps the narwhal, 

 which, although commonly confining itself to the far north, 

 has been occasionally, though rarely, met with to the south- 

 ward, one having even been found stranded at the mouth of 

 the Elbe, in German waters. 



Of walrus ivory, the largest supply in comparatively re- 

 cent years seems to have come from Bering Sea. For several 

 years prior to 1870 as much as 100,000 pounds of walrus 

 ivory is said to have been annually collected here, this 

 representing an annual slaughter of 6,000 walruses. In 

 later years still larger numbers were killed, as many as from 



*"Hakluyt's Travels," Glasgow, 1904, Vol. VIII, pp. 156, 157, "A brief note of the 

 Morsse and the use thereof." 



fDr. Berthold Laufer, "Arabic and Chinese Trade in Walrus and Narwhal Ivory," 

 Leyden, 1913, p. 43, note. 



