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



The fighting is not of the desperate sort indulged in by the 

 fur seal, and the contestants soon separate ; there seems to be no 

 actual seizing and holding of the skin and after each sharp blow 

 the head is quickly withdrawn and held aloft. When the head 

 of the male is elevated, the skin at the top of the neck and shoul- 

 ders is thrown into a series of eight or ten heavy folds which 

 extend downward and forward. These folds do not show when 

 the animal is at rest with the head stretched forward on the sand. 

 The fore flippers are large and thick and have heavy claws, the 

 posterior three claws being well separated. 



Proboscis. 



The proboscis is broad and fleshy to the tip where the nos- 

 trils are placed, the nasal openings being wide apart and 

 directed somewhat downward and outward. The length of the 

 proboscis forward from the canines is about equal to the distance 

 between the canine and eye. It is exceedingly thick and heavy 

 and its width is about equal to the space between the eyes. In 

 one of our specimens, not the largest, it was about nine inches 

 long, but the proboscis of the dead animal can be stretched out 

 somewhat longer.* When the animal is crawling the proboscis 

 is relaxed and pendant ; when sleeping, it rests upon the sand in 

 a shapeless mass. When persistently annoyed the old male 

 slowly raises his head, and retracting the proboscis opens the 

 mouth very wide. He does not bellow loudly but there is much 

 blowing out of the breath through the nostrils with a gurgling 

 sound, the whole proboscis vibrating heavily with the effort. 



*Cleveland says of the southern species that it has "a trunk fifteen inches 

 long;" meaning doubtless its full length back to a point opposite the angle of the 

 mouth. 



In our largest skull — twenty-three and three-quarter inches long — the distance 

 between the canines and the orbit is nine and one-half inches. In the dried and 

 still unmounted skins of our three males, the distance between the tip of the pro- 

 boscis and the eye averaged twenty-three inches, but the skins may have been some- 

 what stretched. In the largest of these skins the distance from the first row of 

 whiskers to the tip of the snout, is fourteen inches. In the largest male obtained 

 by Harris, the distance from tip of proboscis to eye was eighteen inches, making 

 the length of the proboscis forward from the canines about nine inches. Scam- 

 mon (Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., Phila., 1869, pp. 61-63) says, "the proboscis of the 

 northern species in a large male extends from opposite the angle of the mouth 

 forward about fifteen inches." The United States National Museum has a skull 

 obtained at San Cristobal Bay in 1884 by C. H. Townsend which is twenty-four 

 inches in extreme length. 



