WILD ANIMALS YIELDING LEATHER, HORN, ETC. 311 



to King Alfred, who is said to have first used them to preserve 

 his candle time -measurers from the wind. ... A lantern [was 

 formerly] an indispensable family article ; there was no going into 

 the yard or out of the door on dark nights without one. A 

 piece of horn was sometimes placed over the tide of mediaeval 

 MSS. to preserve the letters from injury, while the transparent 

 material allowed them to be read. The child's horn-book of 

 later times had its leaves of alphabet and spelling covered en- 

 tirely with thin sheets of this material. Although the principal 

 manufacturing applications of horn are for combs, umbrella -tops, 

 and knife-handles, yet there are other uses as extensive and 

 varied as the descriptions of horn which come into the market, 

 or brisde on the head of the animals characterized by these 

 frontal appendages. Ox, buffalo, and deer horns are those 

 mostly worked up, but the horns of the rhinoceros, ram, goat, 

 and some other animals are also employed to a limited extent 

 for different purposes. . . . While many of the former uses of 

 horns for glazing purposes, for drinking -cups, for horn -books, 

 and for the bugle of the bold forester have passed away, other 

 and more elegant and varied applications have been found for this 

 plastic and durable substance. Extensive as is the present use 

 of horns, we believe that many further manufacturing purposes 

 may be found for them, and that they will become even still 

 more important in a commercial point of view. They receive 

 a great variety of applications at the present day, owing to 

 their toughness and elasticity, as well as their remarkable pro- 

 perty of softening under heat, of welding, and of being moulded 

 into various forms under pressure." It may be added that for 

 many purposes both leather and horn are now replaced by cheap 

 substitutes. 



As most of the horns used on a large scale for manufacturing 

 purposes are those of oxen, it will suffice to devote the rest of 

 this sub -section to the consideration of certain wild animals 

 captured chiefly for the sake of the leather and fat which they 

 yield. 



The Walrus (Trichechus rosmarus). — This huge aquatic 

 carnivore, which may attain the weight of 3300 lbs., is a purely 

 Arctic form, and once abounded in the Behring Sea, the Gulf of 

 St. Lawrence, and on the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador. 

 Like so many other wild animals, however, it has been so much 



