M. Peron on the Habits of the Sea Elephant. 73 



Art. XIII. — Account of the Habits of the Sea Elephant. * 

 By M. Peron. 



King's Island abounds with sea elephants, (Phoca probosci- 

 dea,j particularly a bay where the vessel Le Geographe cast an- 

 chor, and which is called the Bay of Elephants. This gigantic 

 animal is from twenty to twenty-five, and even thirty feet in 

 length, and fifteen and eighteen feet in circumference. The 

 male is distinguished by a prolongation of the nostril, which 

 is pendulous and flat when in a state of repose ; but when the 

 animal is irritated, it assumes a tubular form when it wishes 

 to attack or to defend. The length of this organ is about one 

 foot. These animals are known only in the southern hemi- 

 sphere, where they inhabit a zone of 20® from 35° to 55'^ of 

 latitude. Equally averse to heat and to cold in summer and 

 winter, they emigrate to those countries where the temperature 

 suits them. They move in large herds, and frequent particu- 

 lar seas in preference to others of the same latitude and tem- 

 perature ; and there are many extensive shores where they are 

 perfectly unknown. In the middle of June they leave the 

 south, and swim to the north. It is then that they resort to 

 King's Island. " About a month after their arrival the fe- 

 males begin to bring forth their young. Assembled altoge- 

 ther upon a particular point of the sea-shore, they are sur- 

 rounded by the males, who do not allow them to return again 

 to the sea, nor do the males themselves return to it not only 

 when the females are delivered of their young, but even during 

 the whole period of the suckling. Whenever the mothers at- 

 tempt to leave their young ones, the males bite them, and 

 force them back. The time of their delivery does not last 

 more than five or six minutes, during which the females ap- 

 pear to suffer a great deal, and at certain times they cry in the 

 most dismal manner. During this painful operation the males, 

 extended all round them, look on with perfect indifierence." 

 The suckling, which lasts seven or eight weeks, is a period 



• From an Analysis of Freycinet's " Voyage de Decouverte aux terres 

 Australes, from 1800 — 180i/' in ihe Revue Enyclopedique iox January 

 1827, a periodical work of great merit, which cannot be too strongly re- 

 commended. 



