176 



kerguelen's land. 



of the animals of the group represented, which is just going to 

 Jand from the sea on the left-hand side of the landscape. The 

 old male elephants were described by the sealers of Heard 

 Island as having a trunk 10 inches in length. These old 

 males were called "Beach-masters." Anson's sailors called 

 the largest male at Juan Fernandez the " Bashaw." 



I obtained from a harpooner, on board one of the whaling 

 schooners which we fell in with at Kerguelen's Land, a very 

 well executed carving in a soft volcanic stone from Heard 

 Island, which represented two men skinning a dead Beach- 

 master. Unfortunately, this was lost with other curiosities in 

 transit from the ship, after we reached home. In this, the 

 trunk of the old male Elephant was shown hanging like a 

 short flaccid tube from the snout. It is shown somewhat thus 

 in Leseur's figure, drawn for Peron, in the case of the animal 

 represented as lying on beach in the foreground ; but the 



trunk there is proba- 

 bly shown much too 

 prominent and solid- 

 looking. The old 

 sealers used to eat 

 the trunks as a tit-bit, 

 calling them " snot- 

 ters." 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 harpooner 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. 



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



* For Peron's "Histoire de I'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. 



DRAWING OF OLD MALE SEA-ELEPHANT. 

 (By a Harpooner.) 



