154 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [chap. 
The largest walrus tusks I have seen were two of a male 
walrus purchased in the summer of 1879 at St. Lawrence Island, 
in the north part of Behring’s Sea.' They measured 830 and 
825 millimetres in length, their largest circumference was 227 
and 230 millimetres, and they weighed together 6,G80 gram. 
I have seen the tusks of females of nearly the same length, hut 
they are distinguished from those of the male by being much 
more slender. The surface of the tusks is always full of cracks, 
but under it there is a layer of ivory free of cracks, which again 
incloses a grained kernel of bone which at some places is semi¬ 
transparent, as if drenched with oil. 
When the walrus ox gets very old, he swims about by 
himself as a solitary individual, but otherwise animals of the 
same age and sex keep together in large herds. The young 
walrus long follows its mother, and is protected by her with 
evident fondness and very conspicuous maternal affection. Her 
first care, when she is pursued, is accordingly to save her young 
even at the sacrifice of her own life. A female walrus with 
young is nearly always lost, if they be discovered from a hunting 
boat. However eagerly she may try by blows and cuffs to get 
her young under water or lead her pursuers astray by diving 
with it under her forepaw, she is generally overtaken and killed. 
Such a hunt is truly grim, but the walrus-hunter knows no 
mercy in following his occupation. The walrus, especially the 
old solitary male, sleeps and rests during autumn, when the 
drift-ice has disappeared, also in the water, with his head now 
above the surface, now under it, and with his lungs so strongly 
inflated that the body is kept floating, with part of the back 
projecting out of the water. The latter way of sleeping is 
indeed possible ordy for so long at once as the animal can keep 
below, but this is said to be a very long time. If a hunting 
boat meets a walrus sleeping in this way it is first wakened with 
a loud ‘‘ strike up ” before it is harpooned, “ in order that in 
its fright it may not knock a hole in the boat with its tusks.” 
