34 THE SEALS AND WALRUSES. 



aud leave the water only for very short intervals. They usually bring forth their young on the ice, 

 most of the species being confined to the colder latitudes. Only one of the various species of the 

 Finnipedia appears to be strictly tropical, and very few of them range into tropical waters. As a 

 group, the Pinnipeds are distinctively characteristic of the arctic, antarctic, and temperate portions- 

 of the globe, several of the genera being strictly arctic or subarctic in their distribution. The 

 Walruses are at present confined mainly within the Arctic Circle, and have no representatives south 

 of the colder portions of the Northern Hemisphere. The Otariidce and Phocidce, on the other hand, 

 are abundantly represented on both sides of the Equator, as will be noticed more in detail later. 



18. THE WALRUSES. 



Discussion of the Atlantic and Pacific species. — There are two species of Walrus, 

 that of the Atlantic, Odobcenus rosmarus Malmgren, and that of the Pacific, 0. obesus (Illiger) Allen. 

 These animals are found only in the extreme north, and it was for many years commonly supposed 

 that there was but a single circumpolar species. Mr. Allen has confirmed the views of Pennant, 

 exi)ressed in 1792 and emphasized since 1870 by Elliott and Gill. Their differences are thus 

 described : 



The Pacific Walrus is similar in size, and probably in general contour, to that of the Atlantic 

 (though possibly rather larger, and commonly described or depicted as more robust or thicker at the 

 shoulders), but quite different in its facial outlines. The tusks are longer and thinner, generally more 

 convergent, with much greater inward curvatures, the bristles upon the muzzle shorter and smaller. 

 The chief external difference appears to consist iu the shape of the muzzle and the size and form 

 of the bristly nose-pad, which has a vertical breadth at least one-fourth greater than in the 

 Atlantic species. Very important differences between the two species are exhibited in the skulls, 

 which are tully described in Mr. Allen's book. 



Disteibution of the Atlantic Walrus. — The Atlantic Walrus is not now to be found 

 within the limits of the United States, nor has it been within historic time, or during the last three 

 hundred and fifty years, though, like the musk ox, the caribou, aud the moose, it ranged during 

 the great Ice Period much beyond the southern limit of its boundary at the time the eastern coast 

 of North America was first visited by Europeans. During the last half of the sixteenth century 

 they are known to have frequented the southern coast of Nova Scotia as well as the shores and 

 islands to the northward, but this appears at that time to have been their southern limit of 

 distribution, and to these islands New England vessels seem occasionally to have resorted to kill 

 them for their teeth and oil.^ In 1775 they were abundant in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, at the 

 Magdalen Islands, Saint John's, and Anticosti, where they congregated yearly to the number of 

 seven or eight thousand, aud where they were soon exterminated by the "Americans."^ 



In 1866 and 1869 Packard and Gilpin recorded the killing of individuals near the Straits of 

 Belle Isle, and in 1868 one was driven ashore in Saint George Bay, Newfoundland. The last seen 

 in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence was, according to Professor Packard, in 1841, when one was killed 

 at Saint Aiigustiue, Labrador. Dr. Bernard Gilpin speaks of the occurrence of their bones at 

 Miscou, on the Bay of Ohaleur, in such numbers as to form artificial sea-beaches. These were, 

 doubtless, victims of "the Royal Company of Miscou," founded during the earlier part of the seven- 



' A vessel that returned at that time (1C41) from the Isles of Sables made a better voyajie, bringing four hundred 

 pair of Sea-horse teeth with divers Inn of oil, besides much other goods of lite sort which they left behind, worth 

 £1500.— Hubbard's History of New England from the discovery to l(]4ri, p. :V7d. 



The Sea-Cow or Morse is plenty upon the coasts of Nova-Scotia aud the Gulph of St. Laurence, particularly at the 

 island of St. John's; it is of the bigness of a middling cow (it is not the same with the Manatee of the Gulph of 

 Mexico), a very thick skin with hair like that of a seal. — Douglass' North America, 1755. 



= Meaning, of course, people from the southern colonies. 



