Associated with the seal, and belonging to the same family, is the walrus, called by the British the sea-horse, the morse, or the sea-cow, and by the French _bête à la grande dent_. His two tusks, rather than his skin, are the prize of the hunter. Unlike the rest of the seal family, he is monogamous, and not polygamous. Cook vividly describes immense herds asleep on the ice, with some of their number on guard, and, when aroused, roaring or braying very loud, while they huddled and tumbled together like swine.[162] At times their multitude is so great, that, before being aroused, several hundreds are slaughtered, as game in a park. Their hide is excellent for carriage-braces, and is useful about ship. But it is principally for their ivory that these hecatombs are sacrificed. A single tooth sometimes weighs several pounds. Twenty thousand teeth, reported as an annual harvest of the Russian Company, must cost the lives of ten thousand walruses. The ivory compares with that of the elephant, and is for some purposes superior. Long ago, in the days of Saxon history, a Norwegian at the court of Alfred exhibited to the king “teeth of great price and excellencie,” from what he called a “horsewhale.”[163] Unquestionably, they were teeth of walrus. I mention the sea-otter last; but in beauty and value it is the first. In these respects it far surpasses the river or land otter, which, though beautiful and valuable, must yield the palm. It has also more the manners of the seal, with the same fondness for sea-washed rocks, and a maternal affection almost human. The sea-otter seems to belong exclusively to the North Pacific. Its haunts once extended as far south as the Bay of San Francisco, but long ago it ceased to appear in that region. Cook saw it at Nootka Sound.[164] Vancouver reports in Chatham Strait an “immense number about the shores in all directions,” so that “it was easily in the power of the natives to procure as many as they chose to be at the trouble of taking.”[165] D’Wolf, while at Sitka, projected an expedition to California “for the purpose of catching sea-otter, those animals being very numerous on that coast.”[166] But these navigators, could they revisit this coast, would not find it in these places now. Its present zone is between the parallels of 50° and 60° north latitude, on the American and Asiatic coasts, so that its range is comparatively limited. Evidently it was Cook who first revealed the sea-otter to Englishmen. In the table of contents of his second volume are the words, “Description of a Sea-Otter,” and in the text is a minute account of this animal, and especially of its incomparable fur, “certainly softer and finer than that of any others we know of.” Not content with description, the famous navigator adds, in remarkable words, “Therefore the discovery of this part of the continent of North America, where so valuable an article of commerce may be met with, cannot be a matter of indifference.”[167] This account