These are two images from the CFZ Photo archives. They show a walrus that turned up - totally by chance - on the Suffolk coast one day.The trouble is that my memory is failing, and although I know what we wrote the story up either for Animals & Men or for one of the yearbooks I cannot remember where.
This highlights the need for a general CFZ Index, but I won''t even attempt to start a project of that magnitude until the current indexing projects (bloggodex and archives) are completed, so it may be some time.
So in the meantime please forgive my fading memory, enjoy these rather special photographs and sit back with baited breath until somebody tells us the rest of the story..
In Sea of Slaughter, Farley Mowat argues that the walrus in Europe actually occurred as far south as the Bay of Biscay in Europe and Cape Cod in North America. However, it possessed within its mouth a substance that European man coveted. Walruses were the main source of ivory for most Europeans until trade routes fully opened up Asia and Africa to elephant ivory. Further, the walruses could produce lots of oil for use as fuel and lubricants, and their notoriously thick hides could produce a very tough leather. Of course, we've seen to it that Walruses are now found only in the far reaches of the Arctic, but at one time they did regularly come south.
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