THE KILLER. 7 



coloured saddle on the back behind the dorsal fin ; there was a patch of paler buff behind 

 the eye, and so far as could be seen, the under parts were also pale yellowish white. 



Often they followed close in under the ship's stern, disporting themselves like 

 the smallest of the Dolphins; and in a herd that followed our ship on February 17th, 

 1904, we saw the young ones with their mothers. The young had not yet developed 

 the yellow saddle, but its position was marked out as a dull grey patch in the 

 darker colour of the back. The ear patch, however, was already distinct and of 

 a yellow colour quite conspicuously marked. In the oldest, or at any rate the largest, 

 the saddle is mainly ochreous yellow with an ill-defined anterior border which merges 

 into the grey-black back. The posterior border on the other hand is well-defined. 

 There is much variation in the size and general shape of the dorsal fin in this 

 species, as may be gathered from the sketches given below (fig. 6), which were taken 

 from the animals, as they sported round the ship, in McMurdo Sound. 



It is probable that some of these Killers remain always as far south as the 

 periodical opening-up of the sea ice will allow them. They were with us in the 

 autumn to the last days of open water in McMurdo Sound, and were again at 

 once apparent when the ice broke up in the spring. Throughout the open part of 

 the year, from the middle of September to the middle of March, we had schools of this 

 whale in McMurdo Sound ; and, no doubt, we could have found them a little farther 

 north in winter as often as the ice in Ross Sea was broken up by the southerly winter gales. 



For its diet in the south we have no actual evidence, but, regarding its alleged 

 propensity for seals and penguins, there can be no possible doubt in my opinion 

 that the scars and wounds inflicted on so many of the seals in the pack ice are 

 the marks of wanton, or unsuccessful, attacks made on them by these whales. 

 Such rents are exceedingly common, both as recently inflicted wounds and as mended 

 scars, and the chief sufferers are the Lobodon Seals, which live habitually in the pack 

 ice of the open sea, and not Weddell's Seals, which keep to the sheltered bights 

 and bays along the coast-line or the cliffs of great ice barriers. An old Lobodon is 

 but rarely to be found without some scars upon his coat ; and an idea of the extensive 

 character of some of these wounds may be gathered from the account given below 

 (see p. 39), and from the figure there given, which is taken from scars on one of the skins 

 in our collection. The whole question of the probable causation of these scars being 

 fully discussed in that chapter, I must refer my readers to it, and state here only that 

 I have no doubt whatever in my own mind that the Killer is responsible for them. 



Penguins, also, in all probability pay heavy toll to these marauding bands, and 

 from the excessive hurry in which they are often seen to leave the water when a herd 

 of Killers is in sight, it is evident that they know their danger sufficiently well. 

 Moreover, the repugnance they show to re-entering the water, even when chased by 

 men or dogs upon the ice, is an additional proof that they know quite well where 

 their customary danger lies, and that they feel it is safer to tackle an unknown and 

 novel risk on the ice than to face what they know to be a certain danger in the water. 



