II.] ANTARCTIC FAUNA 357 



most characteristic appearance to this seal which distinguishes it at 

 once from all the others. 



The nostrils are extensile sacs which give the appearance of a 

 short proboscis to the animal when much excited, and the openings 

 when at rest, instead of facing upwards as in the other Antarctic 

 seals, look straight ahead from an enormous width of muzzle. 

 It has a pecuHar habit of throwing up the head and tail simultane- 

 ously, while it gives vent to a hoarse and wide-mouthed roar, which 

 is intended to dismay the onlooker, as the seal himself makes clumsy 

 efforts to retire. 



The animal, as is now well known, is becoming very scarce ; 

 it was a few years ago within the danger limits of extinction, 

 thanks to the thoughtless methods of the sealers who worked 

 on the Southern ocean islands. There is now, however, a close 

 time which protects the animals to some extent, and although it 

 is now almost impossible to find the older full-grown males, there 

 are still in certain favoured spots a large number of young males 

 and females. 



The Sea Leopard is, after the Sea Elephant, the least strictly 

 polar of the Antarctic seals. It is to be met with, however, fairly 

 constantly in the pack-ice, but always solitary. It runs to twelve 

 feet in length, and may have a girth beneath the flippers of six 

 feet. Its head is large in proportion to its body, and holds a most 

 formidable . array of teeth. It is very long and snake-like, and 

 most admirably adapted to move rapidly under water, where its 

 diet, as we verified by examining the contents of the stomach, 

 includes not only fish and Emperor penguins, but, when occasion 

 offers, the young of the other more harmless kinds of seal. 



It is, as a rule, dark grey, with blacker back, and rich black 

 and silver splashes on the flanks and shoulders. There is, in 

 some cases, a tendency to a tawny colour in the under-parts and 

 flippers, but the most sure way of determining the species, as it is 

 of every other species, is to examine the teeth. In this animal the 

 canines and the incisors, particularly the outer incisors of the 

 upper jaw, are very large, recurved, and powerful. The post 

 canines, five on each side above and below, are powerful three- 

 lobed tridents, admirably made for catching and holding fish 

 and tearing flesh to pieces. This seal is a carnivore of the most 

 aggressive type, and probably in the Antarctic has but one enemy 

 to fear, and that enemy is the still more aggressive carnivorous 

 dolphin, the Orca or Killer whale. 



