204 A NATURALIST ON THE " CHALLENGER 



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and a bottle of whisky. He would not have taken five pounds 

 less the whisky, as it was a matter of honour with him that he 

 should get a drink for his shipmates out of the proceeds. 



Whilst we were killing the male Elephant, two of the cows 

 had been killed by the sailors ; one of them got away for a time 

 to our extreme regret, badly wounded, into the sea, and the 

 unfortunate animal had to be shot several times before it was 

 killed. Being wounded, it made back for the shore. I was 

 astonished at this, since it is directly contrary to the ordinary 

 habits of seals. I presume the animal sought safety with the 

 rest of the herd. 



The Sea-Elephants have a most enormous quantity of blood 

 in them. This wounded female stained all the water of the head 

 of the little bay, red. The blood, so black as it is in the body 

 of the seal, and dark like the muscles, became of a bright arterial 

 red as it mingled with the sea water. Mr. E. Brown (in his 

 account of the Arctic Seals and Whales inhabiting the Coasts of 

 Greenland, " Proc. Zoolog. Soc," 1864), refers to the remarkably 

 dark colour of the flesh of seals, due to the gorging of the muscles 

 with venous blood ; and states further, that in the young seals, 

 which have never been in the water, the muscles are red, and 

 that the blood of the seal, dark when shed, turns thus red, when 

 exposed to sea water or the air. 



These Sea-Elephants, which were prepared as skeletons on 

 board the ship, were found to have only a greenish slime in their 

 stomachs. Neither the Otariadw nor the Sea-Elephants feed 

 during the breeding season, but live upon their fat, becoming 

 gradually thinner and thinner. The Sea-Elephants have a 

 reo-ular layer of blubber on their bodies like that of whales and 

 porpoises. So perfect a protection is this non-conductor against 

 loss of heat, that a dead walrus, which like most seals has the 

 same covering, has been found to retain its internal temperature 

 after having lain 12 hours in ice-cold water* In the Fur-Seals 

 (At otocephalus), there is no such thick layer of blubber de- 

 veloped, but only a small quantity of fat attached to the skin. 



* " Die zweite Deutsche Nord-Polarfarht in den Jahren 1869 und 1870." 

 2. Bd. Wissenschafttliclie Ergebnisse, Leipzig, F. A. Brockkaus, 1874. 

 W. Peters, Zeugetliiere und Fisclie. 



