pper jaw. According to
Crantz, it uses these to scrape mussels and other shell-fish from the
rocks and out of the sand, and also to grapple and get along with, for
they enable it to raise itself on the ice. They are also powerful
weapons of defence against the Polar bear and its other enemies.

The walrus attains a great size. Twelve feet is the length of a fine
specimen in the British Museum. Beechey's party found some of them
fourteen feet in length and nine feet in girth, and of such prodigious
weight that they could scarcely turn them over.

Gratifying accounts are given of the attachment of the female to its
young, and the male occasionally assists in their defence when exposed
to danger, or at least in revenging the attack. Lord Nelson, when a lad,
was coxwain to one of the ships of Phipps's expedition to the Arctic
seas, and commanded a boat, which was the means of saving a party
belonging to the other ship from imminent danger. "Some of the officers
had fired at and wounded a walrus. As no other animal," says Southey,
"has so human-like an expression in its countenance, so also is there
none that seems to possess more of the passions of humanity. The wounded
animal dived immediately, and brought up a number of its companions; and
they all joined in an attack upon the boat. They wrested an oar from one
of the men; and it was with the utmost difficulty that the crew could
prevent them from staving or upsetting her, till the _Carcass's_ boat
(commanded by young Horatio Nelson) came up: and the walruses, finding
their enemies thus reinforced, dispersed." And Captain Beechey gives the
following pleasing picture of maternal affection which he witnessed in
the seas around Spitzbergen: "We were greatly amused by the singular and
affectionate conduct of a walrus towards its young. In the vast sheet of
ice which surrounded the ships, there were occasionally many pools; and
when the weather was clear and warm, animals of various kinds would
frequently rise and sport about in them, or crawl from thence upon the
ice to bask in the warmth of the sun. A walrus rose in one of these
pools close to the ship, and, finding everything quiet, dived down and
brought up its young, which it held to its breast by pressing it with
its flipper. In this manner it moved about the pool, keeping in an erect
posture, and always directing the face of the young towards the vessel.
On the slightest movement on board, the mother released her flippe