EXPEDITION TO SOUTH GEORGIA 



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extreme length. The fattest I saw was a bull eighteen feet four inches long, 

 and so round and distended that it had the appearance of being pneumatic, 

 and inflated under high pressure. Seven men could barely turn its body 

 over with the aid of ropes and hand holes in its skin, even after half the 

 blubber had been removed and a trench had been scooped under one side 

 of the carcass. The blubber was a trifle less than eight inches thick in the 

 center of the breast, and the brute yielded almost as much oil as a young 

 sperm whale. I gained a good idea of the weight of a sea elephant by clean- 

 ing up the skulls, for there was no man among the crew of the " Daisy" who 

 could pick up and carry the head of a large bull until the hide and fat had 

 been cut away from it. 



The question as to whether the greatest of the seal kind is to be preserved 

 at South Georgia depends largely upon the results of an investigation of the 

 status of whales, seals and penguins, now being conducted for the British 

 Colonial Office. The difficulties and expenses of the fishery make it almost 

 impossible for any species of whale to become completely extirpated, how- 

 ever persistently it may be chased, but the unfortunate sea elephants have 

 no such hope of preservation. Slow, unsuspicious, gregarious, they can be 

 hunted profitably until the last one has gone to his ancestors and the calamity 

 of the Antarctic fur seal is repeated. 



A spectacled albatross (Diomedea melanophrys) or "mollymoke." South Atlantic. 

 These birds are less numerous at South Georgia than the great wandering albatross 



