Hector. — Notes on the Southern Seals. 257 



The walrus, or morse, is now found only in the Polar 

 seas, about and northward of Behring Strait ; but their 

 range has been restricted of late, as Captain Cook found 

 them much further south along the coast-line of the North 

 Pacific. 



To describe more in detail : — 



I. Eared Seals. 



A. Hair-seals. 



This group, the sea-lions, rendered so familiar by the rookery 

 outside the Golden Gate of San Francisco, is represented in 

 the south by Zalophus lobatus, which is found chiefly in the 

 longitude of the Cape of Good Hope, and by Protoarctus 

 liookeri, which is supposed to be a different species fre- 

 quenting the islands in the longitude of New Zealand and 

 southward, and is best known at the present time as the 

 Auckland Islands sea-lion. 



Like all the eared seals, these species are polygamous, and 

 have a very definite life-history. The males are enormously 

 larger than the females. About December they take up sta- 

 tions on the coast in warmer latitudes, such as the west coast 

 of New Zealand, and formerly used also to frequent the islands 

 in Bass Strait and on the west coast of Tasmania. Soon 

 afterwards the cow-seals appear, and, on landing, give birth 

 to the young, each male securing a harem of ten to twenty 

 cows, and protecting the mothers and young pups. The 

 rutting-season is in January, after which the males (or lions) 

 leave the mothers to bring up the young until May, when 

 they all leave the coast for the winter. The mode of life of 

 the hair-seals has, however, been much altered since 1863, 

 when I made my first observations, and I believe that the 

 New Zealand hair-seals have now become much more solitary, 

 and that they will soon become extinct. 



B. Fur-seals, or Sea-bears. 



This is in the southern seas "the seal" of commerce, audit 

 is much to be regretted that so little accurate information was 

 collected in former years about its life-history. Three species 

 are supposed to exist (after weeding out many synonyms), but 

 I am inclined to think these even are all the same — Arcto- 

 cephalus falklandicus (of Cape Horn longitude), A. antarctica 

 (of the Cape of Good Hope longitude), A. forsteri (of New 

 Zealand longitude). 



I can only speak of the latter, or New Zealand fur-seal. 

 Formerly they were very abundant along the west coast of the 

 South Island and on the Tasmanian coast. I spent from 

 June, 1863, to January, 1864, in the western sounds of 

 Otago, and have since made many occasional visits at other 

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