616 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, IS8H 



been pretty thoroughly exterminated and to have become mainly eon- 

 lined to the Pedro Kays, some low rooky islets lying about CO miles 

 south of Jamaica, and it was from this locality that, in the spring of 

 1S4G, the specimen was secured which was presented by Gosse to the 

 British Museum, and, as above stated, long remained unique. The 

 West Indian seal has been reported from time to time as occurring at 

 Suit Key Bank, in the Bahamas, on the coast of Yucatan, and two 

 were even taken on the coast of Florida about 1875, hut not until 188.'? 

 did a second specimen find its way into a museum. This, an immature 

 female, was taken near Havana, and through the courtesy of Professor 

 Poey secured for the U. S. National Museum, and after a lapse of three 

 hundred and seventy yearsits positionamongsealsexactlydefined(Plate 

 XOV). In 1886 Mr. Henry L.Ward visited theTriangles, three littleislets 

 108 miles northwesterly from Yucatan, and there found, as he had 

 hoped, a colony of seals, from which he secured some forty specimens 

 before a rising norther forced the party to run back to Campeche. 

 Just how plentiful the seals are now Mr. Ward does not tell us, but 

 at some time they must have been abundant, since the writer's father, 

 who was at the Triangles in 1850, found quantities of skeletons and 

 spoiled hides, indicating the recent existence of a flourishing seal 

 fishery. Whether the West Indian seal is doomed to destruction or not is 

 a little uncertaiu, for so far as food, climate, and suitable breeding places 

 are concerned, everything is favorable to its existence, and in time it 

 may, like the southern right whale, to some extent fill up its now deci- 

 mated ranks. On the other hand, when a species has been reduced be- 

 lpwa certain point it seems, like a stone rolling down-hill, to pursue its 

 downward course with continually accelerated speed until the bottom 

 is reached and the species exists no more. 



AUTHORITIES. 



A Naturalist's Sojourn in Jamaica. P. H. Gosse, London, 1851. 307-314. 



On the West Indian Seal {Monadum tropicalis). F. W. True and F. A. Lucas, Smith- 

 sonian Report, 1884, Part II, 231-235. Three plates. 



Notes on the Life History of Monachus tropicalis. Henry L. Ward, American Natu- 

 ralist, March, 1887. •25T-264. 



The West Indian Seal (Mmiachus tropicalis). J. A. Allen, Bulletin American Museum 

 Natural History, New York, Vol. n, No. 1, 1888. 1-34. Plates of stuffed speci- 

 mens and skeletons. 



THE CALIFORNIA SEA-ELEPHANT. 

 ( Macrorhinus angttstirostris.) 



The California sea-elephant so nearly resembles that of the antarctic 

 seas that one general description can easily serve for both. The sea- 

 elephant is aptly so called, both on account of its size and because the 

 male is furnished with a proboscis, which though short is suggestive of 

 its namesake of the laud. It is the largest of the seals, greatly exceed- 

 ing the walrus, for an old male sea-eleplmnt reaches a length of 15 to 



