274 TEtCHECHIDiE. 



hvalum), because they have very good bone in their teeth : 

 of these teeth they brought some to the King : and their 

 hides are very good for ship-ropes." Rosmar, another 

 Norse name, means " Sea-horse ; " and Morse is from the 

 Russian Morss, Lap Morsk. The Greenlandic name, 

 Awuk, is an imitation of the animal's cry, v?hich Dr. 

 Brown describes as a guttural "aook ! adok ! " 



The head of the Walrus is rounded, and the muzzle is 

 enormously enlarged to give room for the roots of the 

 great tusks. The bristles of the whiskers are very thick, 

 stiff, and semi-transparent; the eyes are small and bright; 

 the orifices of the ears very small and placed far back. 

 The skin is marked with numerous transverse folds on 

 the neck and flanks, and is covered with short close hair. 

 The colour is light brown, darker in the young and paler 

 in the aged animal. 



The milk dentition of the Walrus is given by Wieg- 

 mann as inc. f, can. \:\, mol. J:|. In the adult there are 

 only two small incisors in the upper jaw, and even these 

 are usually lost in macerated skulls. In many specimens 

 there are an additional pair of very small molars, which 

 Prof. Peters considers to be milk teeth abnormally 

 retained ; but Prof. Flower regards it as an open question 

 whether they are not rather permanent teeth in an 

 aborted condition. The enormous canines, which yield 

 a very white and dense ivory, are usually about eight to 

 fourteen inches long in the adult animal, but are some- 

 times much larger. A pair from Spitzbergen formerly 

 in our possession, now in the Cambridge University 

 Museum, are two feet long, and a single tusk in the 

 Oxford Museum is thirty inches in length, including the 

 portion contained in the socket. In these very long tusks 

 a slight spiral twist is often perceptible. 



The adult animal attains a length of ten to fifteen feet ; 



