Birds and Nature, Vol 10 No. 2 [September 1901]Various
History
Birds and Nature, Vol 10 No. 2 [September 1901]
Various
Birds -- Periodicals; Natural history -- Periodicals
She is very fond of fish, and it is amusing to watch her when a fish
cart comes along.
Mrs. Tyler patronizes a certain man that sells fish, and he stops in
front of the house and blows his horn so that she will know he is there.
Topsy has learned to associate the blast from the horn with “fish,” and
the minute she hears a horn blown she starts for the street.
She always receives a piece of fish if it is Mrs. Tyler’s fish monger
that is passing, but it often happens that it is a stranger going by and
then Topsy follows the cart down the street to see if he will not throw
her a piece of fish. If he does not, she comes back chattering angrily
at being cheated out of so enjoyable a meal.
Ethel will call, “Topsy, Topsy,” and the crow will come hopping to her.
“Shake hands,” and Topsy will raise one of her black feet and put it in
Ethel’s hand for her to shake.
When Topsy wishes to go into the house she stands on the door step and
calls, “Mamma, Papa or Ethel” until some one comes and lets her in.
She has many opportunities to leave the place and shift for herself, but
she never goes far from the house and seems to prefer making her home
with the Tyler family.
Martha R. Fitch.
THE WALRUS.
(_Trichechus rosmarus._)
The Walrus (_Trichechus rosmarus_) is a very fat, clumsy brute, much
uglier than his picture, with a coarse, oily skin all wrinkled and
scarred; long, protruding tusks; bristly whiskers and scuffling flippers
that barely serve to move his bulky body over the land. In the water he
is more at home, and though it does not require a high degree of
strength and skill to dig clams, that being his daily occupation, yet he
is able to keep very fat on the fruits of his industry and has much
leisure to swim about or doze on ice floes and sea beaches.
It is only in the arctic regions that Walrus are found. Before the
attacks of whalers and ivory hunters they were found as far south as
Nova Scotia and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but now they have retreated as
far as possible into the frozen north, living in limited numbers about
Hudson’s Bay, Davis Straits and Greenland and in Spitzbergen and
Northern Europe. In the northern Pacific before the slaughter began the
Walrus swarmed by thousands in the broad, shallow bays from the Alaskan
Peninsula to Point Barrow, where the ice never melts.
The food of the Walrus consists of mollusks and crustaceans, which he
digs from the muddy bottom with his long tusks, and the roots and stalks
of sea-weed. He crushes the clams, shells and all, and swallows the
mass, leaving digestion to proceed as it may. The stomach of a Walrus
killed in Bering Sea by Mr. Henry W. Elliott contained more than a
bushel of crushed clams in their shells, with enough other food to make
half a barrel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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