[Footnote G: Perhaps this name, as well as that of _sea-calf_, has been given because the one and the other have a cry which very much resembles the lowing of a cow and of a calf. _Ipsis_ (says Pliny, speaking of the sea-calf) _in somne mugitus, unde nomen vituli_.] Most travellers who have visited the northern seas of Asia, Europe, and America, have mentioned this animal; but Zorgdrager seems to have spoken most clearly on this subject, for which reason I shall subjoin a translation of his remarks, which were communicated to me by the Marquis de Montmirail. "There was formerly great plenty of the walrus and seals in the bays of Horisont and Kloch, but at present there are very few. Both of them quit the water in the summer, and resort to the neighbouring plains, where they are sometimes seen in troops of from eighty to two hundred, particularly the walrus, who will remain there several days together, till hunger obliges them to return to the sea. This animal externally resembles the seal, but he is stronger and much larger.[H] Like the seals they have five toes to each paw, but their claws are shorter, and their head shorter and rounder. The skin of the walrus is an inch thick, wrinkled, and covered with very short hair of different colours. His upper jaw is armed with two tusks, about half an ell, or an ell in length, which are hollow at the root, and become larger as the animal grows in years. Some of them are found to have but one tusk, the other being torn out in fighting with each other, or falling out through age. This ivory generally sells for a greater price than that of the elephant, as it is of a more compact and harder substance. His mouth is like that of the ox, and furnished with hairs which are hollow, pointed, and about the thickness of a straw. Above the mouth are two nostrils, through which these animals spout water like a whale, without however making much noise. Their eyes are red, sparking and inflamed during the summer, at which season the water making too powerful an impression on them, they stay more willingly on shore than at any other time. They are in great numbers about Spitzbergen. They are killed with lances, and the profit derived from their teeth and fat fully repays the trouble; for their oil is almost as much valued as that of the whale. Their two teeth are worth as much as all the oil they produce, and are preferred even to ivory. An ordinary sized tooth will weigh three pounds, and in which case the two will sell for eighteen florins, about the value of half a ton of oil, which is commonly drawn from one of them; so that the animal may be said to be worth six and thirty florins. Formerly great numbers of these animals were seen upon land; but the vessels which every year resort to those seas for the whale fishery, have so frightened them, that they are now retired to more sequestered places; and those that remain no longer go on shore in troops, but either continue in the water, or disperse themselves