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MIEOUNGA ANGUSTIBOSTRIS (Gill). 



(Plates I.— VIIL). 



By the HON. WALTER ROTHSCHILD, Pii.D. 



ri'^HE Californian Sea-Elephant was uescribed from skulls by Theodore Gill in 

 J- detail in the Proceedings of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, vol. i. p. 33, 

 1866 ; but he already gave the salient differences between it and Mirounga leonina 

 (Linn.), and the name in his prodromns for a Monograph of the Pinnepedes in the 

 Proceedings of the Essex Institute, vol. v. p. 13, 1866-7. 



Its ontward appearance was first described by Capt. Charles M. Scammon in 

 the Proceedings of the Academg of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, \i. 63, 1869, 

 and it is figured and described by him also in his Marine Mammals of the N. W 

 Coast of Xorth A)nerica, p. 115, pi. xx. (1874). The unfortunate Sea-Elephants 

 underwent such continual persecution and slaughter at the hands of sealers that 

 when, in 1885, Mr. Charles Townshend succeeded in securing fifteen specimens 

 (twelve females, two young, and one male only 12 ft. long), he expressed the 

 opinion that the species was almost exterminated. 



The number of Sea-Elephants killed on the Californian and Mexican coasts 

 between the years 1880 and 1885 was 294, and of these 16 are preserved in 

 the Smithsonian Institute. The only other recorded specimens {i.e. preserved 

 in museums), besides a few skulls, are a young male and female obtained by 

 Prof. Marsh, and one male, 12 ft. long, in the collection of the Californian Academy 

 of Sciences, since destroyed in the recent earthcjuake. As no Sea-Elephants were 

 got after 1885, it was believed that Mirounga angustirostris was extinct. Therefore, 

 when Mr. Charles Harris, early in 1907, cabled the news that there were still 

 some Sea-Elephants alive on Guadaloupe Island, off the Mexican Coast, I at once 

 told him to get them. He first of all met with ill-luck, owing to rongh sea, while 

 proceeding from San Diego to Guadaloupe, and had to return. After his failure 

 with the steamboat (or, as he put it, " power-boat "), Mr. Harris went to San 

 Quintin, hired a sailing-boat, and succeeded in reaching Guadaloupe Island after 

 a very rough passage. After several days' search Mr. Harris located the herd 

 of Sea-Elephants on the opposite side of the island to his anchorage, on a 

 small beach against perpendicular cliffs over 3000 ft. high. After several weeks' 

 hard work in hurricane seas (twelve days running it was too rough to land) 

 Mr. Harris and his party killed fourteen Sea-Elephants, of which four entire 

 bulls, three cows, and two bulls' skeletons reached England safely. Throe bulls 

 and two cows were lost on two separate occasions by the upsetting of the boat 

 in the breakers. 



Plate I. represents the cove where the vessel anchored ; Plate II., part of the 

 beach fre(juented by the Sea-Elephants, with eight of tuem asleep on the shore ; 

 Plate III., four bulls swimming ; Plate IV., three bulls on the beach ; Plate V., 

 a bull on the beach and a quantity of bones ; Plate VI., a bull just crawling out 



