200 A NATURALIST ON THE " CHALLENGER." 



matter, full of charred remnants of vegetable tissue, but I could 

 find no recognizable leaves or definite forms, except something 

 which resembled a Chara. Even microscopic structure seems 

 entirely destroyed. From the glaciated condition of the beds 

 overlying the coal and red earth, the great antiquity of the 

 Kerguelen vegetation is evident. It has been dwelt upon by 

 Sir J. D. Hooker. 



At Betsy Cove are the graves of some whalers, none of very 

 old date. They have small white painted wooden monuments. 

 It was at Betsy Cove that the best teal shooting was enjoyed, 

 there being several small rivers in the neighbourhood, and 

 plenty of small ponds and marshy ground with abundance of 

 cabbages. On one of my teal shooting excursions I met with a 

 Sea-Leopard (Stenorynchus L&ptonyx, Gray). The beast is very like 

 the common British seal in appearance. It is spotted yellowish 

 white and dark grey on the back, the under surface being of a 

 general yellowish colour. 



The one in question was small, not more than five feet long. 

 It was asleep, lying almost on its back on the grass in a little 

 bay. The poor beast showed no fight at all, and never snarled 

 or showed its teeth. I killed it with a stone and my hunting 

 knife, and sent it on board to be made into a skeleton. 



The Sea-Leopard seems still pretty abundant on the coasts. I 

 saw one much larger in Eoyal Sound, and Yon Willemoes 

 Suhm killed another. The sealers said they intended to visit 

 Swain's Island, a small outlier, to kill a herd of 400 of these 

 seals reported to be in a rookery there. 



Farther along the coast, on the same day, I encountered 

 a small herd of Sea-Elephants consisting of four females and two 

 males. One male was much larger than the other, and the four 

 cows were reclining beside him, the younger and less power- 

 ful male lying apart from the rest. All were resting on a thick 

 bed of seaweed cast up by the tide on a beach of large pebbles. 



The male was 12 feet long and enormously heavy and fat. 

 The females were about eight feet in length. All were of a 

 light fawn colour except one female which was shedding her 

 coat, and was covered over with patches of reddish hair. Though 

 I fired my gun at some teal close by, the Elephants were little 



