KERGUELEX'S LAND. 203 



much too prominent and solid looking. The old sealers used to 

 eat the trunks as a tit-bit, calling them " snotters." Goodridge 

 speaks of it as " a sort of fleshy skin, which hangs over the nose." 

 In Anson's Voyage it is described as hanging down five or six 

 inches below the end of the upper jaw. Peron says very little 

 in his account of the Sea-Elephant about the trunk.* 



I give here a woodcut, from a rough drawing made for me by 

 the harponeer above referred to, of a " Beach-master," with its 

 trunk in the inflated condition. 



The trunk, when the animal is enraged, is inflated and 

 erected, being blown full of air. From the drawing it appears 

 that Anson's figure is probably nearly correct in the matter of 

 the trunk, as it certainly is in the manner in which the tail is 

 curled up into the air in the enraged beast. 



DRAWING OF OLD MALE SEA-ELEPHANT. 



(By a Harponeer.) 



The trunk is produced by inflation of a loose tubular sac of 

 skin placed above the nostrils, just as is the "cap" in the 

 northern Bladder -nose seal (Cystaphora proboscidea). The trunk 

 is evidently, as appears from both the drawings, sacculated, and 

 hence irregular in form when inflated. In the Bladder-nose 

 the nasal cap develops, only at advanced age, just as in the case 

 of the trunk of the Sea-Elephant. 



I bought the stone carving from the harponeer for a sovereign 



* For Peron's " Histoire de l'Elephant Marin," see I.e. T. II, p. 32. A 

 translation of it is given in Brewster's " Edinburgh Journal of Science," 

 1827, Vol. II, p. 73. 



