THE ELEPHANT-SEAL. 



189 



The elephant-seal is a native of the southern hemi- 

 sphere, in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Southern Oceans, 

 between 35° and 55° S. lat., Kerguelen's Land, South 

 Georgia, Juan Fernandez, South Shetlands, and the 

 Falklands. Tliis huge seal lives in troops, which at 

 certain seasons frequent various islands in the southern 

 seas, especially where fresh-water lakes or swamps, in 

 which they delight to wallow, are easily accessible. 

 They are in fact migratory animals, advancing with the 

 M'inter season towards the tropic of Capricorn, and 

 towards the south in the summer. It is in the middle of 

 June that they perform their first migration, covering, 

 in countless multitudes, the shores of King Ishmd, which, 

 as the sailors report, are sometimes blackened by them. 



128.— Skull of Elephant-Seal. 



Here the females produce their young, and, as it is 

 affirmed, the males form a line between the females and 

 the sea, while the latter are nursing their cubs, in order 

 to prevent the possibility of their deserting their charge, 

 even for the shortest space of time. (Figs. 129 and 130.) 

 The period of nursing and imprisonment lasts for seven 

 or eight weeks, during which time the females are de- 



