Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/361

Rh disturbed. His aim ever was to maintain peace abroad and quiet at home, and the chief blot on his ministerial career is that through lovo of office he allowed himself to be drawn into the war with Spain. In business matters he was methodical; his judgment was sound in financial affairs; and his speeches were marked by clear ness of expression. Pope, who loved him not, has borne witness to his merits &quot;in the happier hours of social pleasure,&quot; but neither in private nor in public life were his manners refined or his estimates of men and women exalted. &quot;All these men have their price &quot; was his estimate of members of the House of Commons, and although he gathered together at Houghton many of the master pieces of painting he was not a lover either of art or of letters. All the eminent writers of the day were opposed to his rule, and at his fall his jealous spirit had driven into opposition every politician of repute. Great as his faults were, his character was suited to the temperament of the period within which he lived, and during his tenure of office his country advanced in prosperity by leaps and by bounds.

His life is written by Archdeacon Coxe In three ponderous folios, and has more recently been described in one volume by Mr Ewald. (W. P. C.)

WALPURGIS, WALPURGA, or WALBURGA, ST, was born in Sussex about the end of the 7th or the beginning of the 8th century, and was educated at Winburn, Dorset, where, after taking the veil, she remained for twenty- seven years. She then at the instance of her uncle, St Boniface, and her brother, St Wilibald, set out along with some other nuns to found religious houses in Germany. Her first settlement was at Bischofsheim in the diocese of Mainz, and two years later (754) she became abbess of the Benedictine nunnery at Heidenhelm, within her brother Wilibald s diocese of Eichstadt in Bavaria, where also another brother, Winebald, had at the same time been made head of a monastery. On the death of Winebald in 760 she succeeded him in his charge also, retaining the superintendence of both houses until her death on February 25, 779. Her relics were translated to Eichstadt, where she was laid in a hollow rock, from which exuded a kind of bituminous oil afterwards known as Walpurgis oil, and regarded as of miraculous efficacy against disease. The cave became a place of pilgrimage, and a fine church was built over the spot. She is commemorated at various times, but principally on May 1, her day taking the place of an earlier heathen festival, which was characterized by various rites marking the commencement of summer. In art she is represented with a crozier, and bearing in her hand a flask of balsam.

WALRUS, or. In the article Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Mammalia (vol. xv. p. 442) it was shown that the existing members of the Pinniped division of the order Carnivora are divided into three very distinct groups, the true seals (Phocidæ), the sea-bears or eared seals (Otariidæ), and the Trichechidæ, containing the walrus alone, in some respects intermediate between the other two, but also possessing, especially in its greatly modified dentition, peculiar characters of its own.

Trichechus is the almost universally accepted generic name by which the walrus is known to zoologists, but lately some confusion has been introduced into literature by the revival of the nearly obsolete terms Rosmarus by some authors and Odobænus by others. T. rosmarus is the name of the species met with in the Arctic seas; that of the North Pacific, if distinct, is T. obesus. The following description will apply equally to both. A full-grown male walrus measures from ten to eleven feet from the nose to the end of the very short tail, and is a heavy, bulky animal, especially thick about the shoulders. The head is rounded, the eyes rather small, and there are no external ears. The muzzle is short and broad, with, on each side, a group of very stiff, bristly whiskers, which become stouter and shorter in old animals. The tail scarcely projects beyond the skin. The fore-limbs are free only from the elbow; the hand is broad, flat, and webbed, the five fingers being of nearly equal length, the first slightly the longest. Each finger has a small, flattened nail, situated on the dorsal surface at a considerable distance from the end. The hind-limbs are enclosed in the skin of the body almost to the heel. The free portion, when expanded, is fan-shaped, the two outer toes (first and fifth) being the longest, especially the latter. Cutaneous flaps project considerably beyond the bones of the toes. The nails of the first and fifth toes are minute and flattened; those of the second, third, and fourth elongated, sub-compressed, and pointed. The soles of both fore and



hind feet are bare, rough, and warty. The surface of the skin generally is covered with short, adpressed hair of a light, yellowish-brown colour, which, on the under parts of the body and base of the flippers, passes into dark reddish-brown or chestnut. In old animals the hair becomes more scanty, sometimes almost entirely disappearing, and the skin shows ample evidence of the rough life and pugnacious habits of the animal in the innumerable scars with which it is usually covered. It is everywhere more or less wrinkled, especially over the shoulders, where it is thrown into deep and heavy folds.

One of the most striking external characteristics of the walrus is the pair of tusks which descend almost directly downwards from the upper jaw, sometimes attaining a length, in old animals, of 20 inches, or even more. In the female they are as long or sometimes longer than in the male, but less massive. In the young of the first year they are not visible. These tusks correspond to the upper canine teeth of other mammals. All the other teeth, including the lower canines, are much alike—small, simple, and one-rooted, and with crowns, rounded at first, but wearing to a flat or concave surface. The complete dentition appears to be i $3⁄3$, c $1⁄1$, pm $4⁄4$, m $1⁄0$=$9⁄8$, total 34. Many of these teeth are, however, lost early, or remain through life in a rudimentary state concealed beneath the gum. The teeth which are usually functionally developed are i $1⁄0$, c $1⁄1$, pm $3⁄3$=$5⁄4$ total 18. The tusks are formidable weapons of defence, but their principal use seems to be scraping and digging among the sand and shingle for the molluscs and crustaceans on which the walrus feeds. They are said also to aid in climbing up the slippery rocks and ledges of ice on which so much of the animal's life is passed. Although this function of the tusks is affirmed by numerous authors, some of whom appear to have had opportunities of actual observation, it is explicitly denied by Malmgren.

Walruses are more or less gregarious in their habits, being met with generally in companies or herds of various sizes. They are only found near the coast or on large masses of floating ice, and 