254 DISCOVERY REPORTS 



Nordenskjold glacier and can then be seen asleep on the floes. In the winter, too, they 

 haunt the patch of kelp off the Marine Biological Station on King Edward Point, and 

 can be seen bringing to the surface and devouring the fish which they catch there. 

 In getting on to the ice floes they take astonishing leaps from the water, suddenly 

 shooting out to a height of 6 ft., after first reconnoitring the place where they are going 

 to land. In 1926 the Resident Magistrate, Mr E. Binney, showed the writer a photo- 

 graph of a leopard seal that had jumped out of the water on to the back of a dead 

 whale as it lay alongside the jetty of the whaling station. 



The food of the leopard seal consists mainly of fish and penguins. As stated above, 

 the members of the ' Discovery ' staff often watched them catching fish off the Marine 

 Biological Station during the winter. The stomach of one examined at Else Bay in 

 September 1925 was full of small pieces of blubber, though digestion was too far 

 advanced to be able to determine whether it was from seal or penguin. Leopard seal 

 are always to be seen cruising about in the water at the places where the penguins 

 land to go to their rookeries, and they take heavy toll of them. In eating a penguin 

 the seal brings it to the surface and shakes it as a dog does a rat, and then, holding it 

 by the belly, continues shaking until the skin is completely inverted. It then eats the 

 carcass, discarding the skin and feathers. They have also been observed eating penguins 

 at sea away from the rookeries. On one occasion one was seen to come up underneath 

 a Giant Petrel that was swimming on the water and drag it down. The seal brought 

 it to the surface when it was half drowned and devoured it after skinning it in the 

 manner described above. When the sealers are rafting off the elephant-seal blubber 

 to their ship a leopard seal will often follow them, biting large lumps out of the floating 

 blubber and twisting and turning around in the water to detach them. 



The young of the leopard seal are born in late August and early September. The 

 females come ashore to give birth and are always strictly solitary. A foetus 3 ft. long 

 was taken from a large female killed near King Edward Point in July 1925. In 

 September 1925 a young one 3J ft. long was seen at Else Bay. It was lying on the 

 beach near two females, neither of which appeared to take any interest in it. It was 

 very tame, merely lifting up its head to look at us when we approached and not 

 showing its teeth. It seemed to be very weak and feeble, having a thin body and dis- 

 proportionately large head that appeared almost too heavy for its neck to support, for 

 it wavered from side to side when it was raised. During November and December 

 young ones from 6 to 7 ft. long are frequently to be seen on the beaches, having then 

 left their parents. The young at this age make a loud shrill cry much like the noise 

 of a ship's steam siren, and so remarkable is this likeness that on one occasion on 

 hearing it during the night the people on King Edward Point turned out to see what 

 ship was coming in. The young grow very rapidly, but are not mature for at least 

 a year: the skull of one 9 ft. long, evidently born in the previous spring, killed at 

 Grytviken in June 1925, still had the parietal foramen unclosed and | in. in diameter. 



The females are much bigger than the males, growing to 14 ft. long, whilst the length 

 of a full-grown male is about 10 ft. 



