160 Zoological N. Y. Zoological Society. [I; 8 



Northwestern Coast, there has been little information available 

 respecting the species. 



In 1884 and again in 1892, I obtained information from seal 

 hunters in California that 419 elephant seals had been taken by 

 them at various times from 1880 to 1884 at San Cristobal Bay 

 and Guadalupe Island, Lower California. According to my in- 

 formants, some of whom had long engaged in sealing in a desul- 

 tory way, the elephant seal became scarce about 1865, and only 

 a few stragglers had been found until the discovery of a small 

 herd at San Cristobal Bay in 1880. This bay occupies -a midway 

 position on the Peninsula and is uninhabited, there being no 

 fresh water along the coast within fifty miles. As the beaches 

 are narrow, elephant seals found lodgment chiefly in the dry 

 gullies opening into them. 



I visited this locality in October and December, 1884, in the 

 schooner Laura of San Francisco in search of specimens of the 

 elephant seal for the United States National Museum* The 

 beach frequented by the seals was kept under observation from 

 October 20 until December 31, but we obtained only sixteen ani- 

 mals, the skins and skeletons of which were secured for the 

 National Museum. I visited a number of other localities on the 

 same voyage, but the species was not observed elsewhere, al- 

 though we searched both the coast and the islands as far south as 

 Magdalena Bay. We examined the shores of Guadalupe Island 

 in October, but on account of unfavorable weather, overlooked the 

 locality at present occupied by the elephant seal on the northwest 

 side of the island. It may have existed there at that time. 



In 1892, I again visited Guadalupe Island in the schooner 

 Santa Barbara, under the auspices of the Department of State, 

 with a view to identifying the species of fur seal known to exist 

 there, the information being desired for the use of the Fur Seal 

 Arbitration then convened at Paris. f Although the entire coast 

 line of the island was carefully examined during our search for 

 the fur seal, we found no trace of the elephant seal until we 



*An Account of Recent Captures of the California Sea Elephant and Statis- 

 tics Relating to the Present Abundance of the Species. By Charles H. Townsend. 

 Proc. U. S. National Museum, 1885, pp. 90-93. 



fNotes on the Fur Seals of Guadalupe, The Galapagos and Lobos Islands. By 

 Charles H. Townsend, Report on Fur Seal Investigations 1896-97, part III, pp. 

 265-69, Treas. Dept., Doc. No. 2717, Div. Special Agents. 



