40 EDWARD A. WILSON. 



shallow rents which arc made in the rutting months by other males. These cannot be 

 mistaken for the long scars at present under discussion. 



Ommatophoca males show abundant fighting scars, but I am not aware of any skin 

 of this species which shows the characteristic rents, though the scarcity of skins almost 

 removes this seal from the discussion. 



Stenorhinchus leptonyx, one might imagine, would be free of these wounds if 

 speed and strength can avoid them, yet it has been reported with the typical 

 open wounds, the specimen being a young one. The fact remains, however, that 

 whereas in other seals the scars occur but rarely, in Lobodon one may say they are 

 the rule. Out of twenty -four skins of Lobodon in the ' Discovery ' collection no less 

 than thirteen have the marks of these scars and wounds upon them, quite distinct in 

 every case from the fighting scars. The small, short, and often abundant fighting scars 

 are found on the males alone ; they are more abundant in nearly every case about 

 the head and neck, and of this, skins 7, 8, and 22 of our collection afford good 

 examples, though in the male Weddell's Seal they are often universal, with a special 

 abundance round the genital orifice. The more serious scars and wounds, on the 

 other hand great rents measuring from 12 to 17 and 20 inches long, arranged in 

 parallel rows from 2 to 2^ and 2^ inches apart from one another these are, of course, 

 not made by seals' teeth. 



In almost every case they are on the sides of the animal or on the abdomen, and 

 appear to have been inflicted from below. There is a close similarity in them all that 

 at once puts out of court the suggestion of damage done by ice movements. One can 

 imagine a seal being crushed between moving ice floes, or losing a flipper, or its life, 

 but one cannot see how ice can tear the skin like a horse-rake, leaving ten or twelve 

 tooth marks in a parallel series, each equi-distant, more or less, and up to 18 inches in 

 length (see fig. 26, p. 38). Such wounds can only have been made by the Killer Whale, 

 the Orca gladiator the predacious dolphin of whose powers Eschricht gives us some 

 idea when he says that in the stomach of one of the Northern Killers were found 

 the remains of no less than thirteen porpoises and fourteen seals. 



This wolf of the seas is extraordinarily abundant in the Antarctic ; we have seen 

 it constantly in herds of a score or more together hunting along the edges of the ice 

 where seals and penguins may be found. On a few occasions McMurdo Sound has 

 been full of them, their high curved fins appearing everywhere, and on one occasion 

 there must have been a hundred in a herd. These powerful beasts, about 15 to 20 feet 

 in length, are almost, if not quite, identical with the Northern form. They travel far 

 to North and South, and were with us in S. lat. 30 as well as in 78. They seem to 

 be resident in the South so far as open water will allow, for they appear as the ice 

 breaks up, and are last seen as the water freezes over. Ever on the hunt for seals and 

 penguins, the damage that they do is written plain on Lobodon s skin, and I think it is 

 impossible to doubt its evidence.* 



* See also F. D. Bennett, " Whaling Voyage round the Globe," 1840. Vol. ii., p. 239. 



