56 B. BROWN ON THE SEALS OF GREENLAND. 



(6.) Trichechus rosmarus, Linn. 



Trichechus rosmarus, Linn. 

 Rosmarus arcticus. Pall. 



Trichechus ohesus (et T. divergens, V\.,jide Gray). 

 Odobcenus rosmarus (L.), Sundeval, Uebci's. der Ver- 

 liandl. der Akad. der Wiss., 1859, p. 441. j 



Popular names. — Sea-horse (English sailors) ; JValrus and Morse 

 {Russ., English naturalists and authors) ; Hvalross (Swedish and 

 Danish); Aavhest (Sea-horse) and Rosmar (Norse); Morsk 

 (Lapp); Awuk or Biivek (Greenlanders and Eskimo generally) : 

 this word is pronounced aook and (like many savage names of 

 animals) is derived from the peculiar sound it utters, a guttural 

 aook I aook I 



General descriptive Remarks. — The general form of the Walrus 

 is familiar enough. How^ever, specimens in museums and the 

 miserably woebegone cubs which have been already twice brought 

 to this country but poorly represent the Walrus in its native haunts. 

 The skin of the forehead (in stuifed specimens) is generally dried 

 to the skull ; while in the live animal it is full, and the cheeks 

 tumid. The skin of old animals is generally wrinkled and gnarled, 

 I have seen an old Walrus quite spotted with leprous-looking 

 marks consisting of irregular tubercuhir-looking white cartilaginous 

 hairless blotches ; they appeared to be the cicatrices of wounds 

 inflicted at different times by ice, the claws of the Polar Bear, or 

 met with in the wear and tear of the rough-and-tumble life a Sea- 

 horse must lead in N. lat. 74°. The very circumstantial account 

 of the number of mystacial bristles given in some accounts is 

 most erroneous ; they vary in the number of row^s and in the 

 number in each row in alm.ost every specimen. They are elevated 

 on minute tubercles, and the spaces between these bristles are 

 <i0vered with downy whitish hair. I have seen several young 

 Walruses in all stages, from birth until approaching the adult 

 stage, and never yet saw them of a black colour, and should have 

 been inclined to look upon the statement that they are so as un- 

 founded, had it not been for the high authority of its author.* All 

 I saw were of the ordinary brown colour, though, like most* 

 animals, they get lighter as they grow old. Neither are the] 

 muffle, palm, and soles " hairy when young " ; in one which l' 

 examined before it was able to take the water I saw no difference 

 between it and its mother in this respect. The Walrus appears to 

 cast its nails ; for in several which I examined about the same 

 time (viz., in August) most of the nails which had been developec 

 were gone, and young ones beginning to appear. The dentition has 

 been examined by McGillivray {op. cit.y\, Rapp, Owen, J Flower, 

 Peters, § and others. In an aged male which I examined at Scott's 

 Inlet, Davis's Strait, August 3, 1861, the small fifth molar on th( 



* Gray, Cat. Seals and Whales in Brit. Mus., 2nd ed., p. 36. 

 t Bull. Sc. Nat., xvii., p. 280. 

 X Proc. Zool. Soc , 1853, p. 103. 

 § Monatsber. der Akad. der Wiss. zu Berlin, Dec. 1864, p. 685 j transl 

 Annals l^at. Hist., xv. (3rd series), p. 355. 



