34 EDWARD A. WILSON. 



r 



9th of April. Others, also, appeared at various times a short distance from the 

 edge of the unbroken ice, but only so long as the open water was quite easily within 

 reach, as it was even into the second week of May. Then the whole strait became 

 once more frozen over, and this sheet of ice remained unbroken for close on two years, 

 during which time the open water was never nearer to us than five miles, and much 

 more generally was ten to twenty miles away. 



From the day when the sea froze over we had no more visits from the Crab-eaters. 

 They shunned the fast ice and frequented only its margin and the pack. The reason 

 of this may be that the Crustacea on which they feed are abundant only in the open 

 pack, and we know that Euphausice are not common under the fast ice. Nearly two 

 years later, when the ice again broke up in McMurdo Sound, a single Lobodon made 

 its appearance, a male, considerably battle-scarred and weather-worn. It had been 

 freely eating a red seaweed, with which we found the stomach filled. It is possible, 

 however, that this animal was sick, and that in thus entering the strait at all it was 

 following the instinct of retirement in sickness and approaching death, upon which I 

 have dwelt more fully in speaking of Weddell's Seal. 



Certain it is that Lobodon, notwithstanding its pelagic habit of life, even more 

 than Leptonychotes, tends to wander great distances at the approach of death, and to 

 extraordinary heights up the glaciers of South Victoria Land. Thirty miles from the 

 sea shore and 3000 feet above sea level, their carcases were found on quite a number 

 of occasions, and it is hard to account for such vagaries on other grounds than that a 

 sick animal will go any distance to get away from its companions. 



In the extracts from the late Mr. Hanson's diary, published in the ' Southern 

 Cross ' Report (p. 95), the same point is touched upon, though the carcases in this 

 case were discovered, not at. great heights upon the glaciers, but at sea level. He 

 says : " This afternoon I commenced digging out some seal mummies. I found in all 

 twelve of them." His list includes eight Crab-eaters, two Weddell's Seals, and two that 

 were indeterminable. Only one of the twelve was not adult or old, and he proceeds 

 to say : " What does this list tell us ? Shall we here find a solution of the zoological 

 problem, Where do the Antarctic seals bring forth their young ? It would be of great 

 interest to get the problem solved, as the life and resort of the seals during the 

 breeding season is entirely unknown." One of the Crab-eaters he found was a 

 " female with embryo." 



On September 14th, a short month before his death, Nicolai Hanson wrote 

 again in his diary : " To-day something of great zoological interest happened. 

 Fougner found a male white seal far up in the land (about 500 metres) under the 

 mountain. As he was very savage and wanted to attack Fougner when he approached 

 him, he had to return to the hut and call Evans to come to his assistance with a 

 rifle. ... To judge by the colour it was an exceedingly old animal white as chalk 

 and he had not a sound tooth in his jaws. In the skin there was a number of large 

 scars, but all old ; the peritoneum was full of innumerable small black hard tumours 



