THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE 

 ELEPHANT SEAL 



WITH NOTES ON 

 OTHER SEALS FOUND AT SOUTH GEORGIA 



By L. Harrison Matthews, m.a, 



(Plates XIX-XXIV) 

 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE ELEPHANT SEAL, MIROUNGA LEONINA, Linn. 



ELEPHANT seal, the largest of their race, in countless thousands make the shores 

 of South Georgia their home during the southern summer. They are away at sea 

 all the winter, and at the approach of spring they commence to haul out to breed on 

 the beaches, where they congregate in rookeries, staying ashore for months on end 

 (Plate XIX, figs. I, 2). They are exceedingly slothful and unwieldy animals, the bulls 

 being very much larger than the cows, and provided with a fleshy inflatable proboscis 

 which hangs down over the mouth. The cows have no proboscis, but they are able to 

 inflate the nostrils, producing a swelling and puckering of the skin of the nose. Elephant 

 seals are polygamous, each bull gathering a harem of cows, which he jealously guards 

 from his rivals. After the breeding season is over they return to the sea for several 

 weeks, and then haul out again and spend two months on the land whilst the hair is 

 shed and a new coat is grown. 



Distribution. Beneath the skin of the elephant seal there is a layer of blubber so 

 thick that when moving on the land "the whole body trembles like a bag of jelly." It 

 is the presence of this blubber that has caused the elephant seal to be hunted nearly 

 to extinction in many of its former haunts. At the end of the eighteenth century it 

 was found on the coasts of Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, and southern Chile, and was 

 plentiful on the Falkland Islands, the South Shetland and South Orkney Islands, and 

 at South Georgia. Further east it occurred in thousands at Tristan da Cunha and 

 Gough Islands, Marion and Prince Edward Islands, the Crozet Islands, Kerguelen 

 and Heard Islands and Macquarie Island, and it has also been seen on the coasts of 

 South Africa. An allied race was formerly abundant on the coasts of California and 

 Western Mexico and the nearby islands : a few still remain on Guadalupe Island. By 

 the indiscriminate slaughter of young and old they have been exterminated or reduced 

 to a mere remnant in most of these places, but they are still found in numbers sufficient 

 for hunting in South Georgia, Kerguelen, Heard and Macquarie Islands. At South 

 Georgia the hunting was formerly so intense that by 1885 elephant seals were prac- 

 tically extinct. After this date the island was not worked for some years, so that the 



