The Walrus, unlike the Sea Lions, is believed to be monogamous. It is known, however, that in the islands of Behring’s Strait the female gives birth at nine months to a single young one, usually on the ice-floes. The Seals show a remarkable change in the colour of their coat at different periods of their life; but the young Walrus resembles its parents, though it has no tusks, these not protruding to any great extent for two years after its birth. The young evidently suckle their mother up to the period just mentioned, and this seems necessary, because in the absence of tusks the former are unable to procure the shell-fish and other nourishment by digging. It is quite possible that the attachment and maternal instinct of the helplessness of her great full-grown baby to forage and protect itself in part lead to that abandonment of self conspicuously shown in the heartrending stories of hunters. Whether the Morse has the marked migratory habits which we shall afterwards show obtain among the Seals is uncertain. Circumstances rather tend to prove it to be more permanent in its resorts, though occasionally some individuals must straggle from the herd, since at intervals its occurrence on the British coast has been recorded. Undoubtedly its area is decreasing, and the remaining few seek unfrequented spots in high latitudes less accessible to the sealers. In former days their abundance is historically handed down to us in the fact--as Dr. Rink, Dr. Robert Brown, and others tell us--that the Greenlanders “paid their tribute to the Crusades in the shape of Walrus-tusks, delivered in Bergen in 1327, and their weight is noted in a receipt which is still in existence.” But a century ago their numbers were enormous, on the shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, sixteen hundred being slaughtered at an onset. Among the first voyagers to Spitzbergen it was no uncommon thing to slay hundreds in a few hours. Lamont tells a story of four boats’ crews, in 1852, massacring nine hundred Walruses in a herd of some thousands which they discovered in one of the small islands to the south of Spitzbergen. So greedy were the hunters that half of their spoil had to be left behind, and the rotting carcases afterwards raised such a stench that the animals deserted this previously favourite haunt, a sad lesson of man’s inhumanity and savage lust of gain. The more general opinion is that the flesh of the Walrus is tolerably palatable, and certainly the Eskimo consider the hide a dainty for dessert. The tongue, at least, is excellent, and a favourite dish amongst the whale-fishers and the crews of the various Arctic expeditions. Lamont, dining on stewed Walrus veal, mentions its being slightly insipid, but good eating notwithstanding; the old animal’s flesh, however, is by no means so universally admired, although Arctic crews, at a pinch, much prefer it to salt junk.