THE SEA ELEPHANT. 53 



tail flippers, the animal swings round the hinder portion of its body and shows a 

 threatening front with its open mouth. The motion is very characteristic ; both 

 ends are off the ground at the same moment, the hind flippers and tail swinging high 

 into the air, while the head and neck are reared up, and the animal edges itself into 

 a frontal position with the help of its fore limbs and a kind of backward shuffle. 



The Macquarie Islands have long been known as a stronghold of this seal, but it 

 has from time to time been reported as equally abundant in the Kerguelen, Marion, 

 Heard, and Crozet Islands. It is said not to come so far north as the Campbell and 

 Auckland Islands in the direction of New Zealand, although in other directions it has 

 been taken at Tristan da Cunha, Juan Fernandez, the Falkland Islands, New Georgia 

 and Inaccessible Islands ; also from the Cape of Good Hope (Bartlett) and the 

 " Antarctic Seas." It is therefore a seal of wide distribution, occurring abundantly 

 in the South Indian and South Pacific Oceans, and wandering as much to the north 

 as to the south. 



For a discussion of the rights to specific distinction of the Californian species 

 of Macrorhinus I must refer my readers to Desmarest (Mammalogie, pp. 239-240), 

 Scammon (The Marine Mammals of the N.W. Coast of N. America, 1874), Allen 

 (History of N. American Pinnipeds, p. 466), and Lydekker (Roy. Nat. Hist., 

 Vol. II., p. 147). 



After more than two years in the Antarctic ice without seeing any but the four 

 well-recognised Antarctic species of seal, it was something of a surprise to meet with 

 a Sea Elephant in McMurdo Sound. While encamped at Cape Royds (77 40' S. lat.) 

 on the outskirts of the penguin rookery which has there established itself, our 

 attention was arrested by the sight of a large yellowish seal, with a bulk and colour 

 and general appearance that in no way suggested any of the common forms we were 

 accustomed to. It lay on the black sandy beach not five yards from the water's edge, 

 and as we came in sight raised its head and shoulders well on its fore limbs in a way 

 that no Weddell Seal, Crab-eater, Ross or Leopard Seal could imitate. In every way, 

 in bulk, in colour, and in attitude it reminded us of the Macquarie Elephants ; it had 

 also the same characteristic way of changing front. It was nevertheless hard to 

 believe that a Sea Elephant, an animal that has become so rare now even in its 

 own proper habitat, should have wandered thus far against the prevailing winds and 

 ocean currents. 



Having no means of capturing the animal, we made haste to leave him and return 

 to camp, seeing that he became uneasy at the sight of us and evidently thought of 

 taking to the water. On our return we were still twenty yards away when he awoke 

 and raised himself well up on the fore limbs so that his broad blunt muzzle faced us. 

 The nostrils were then conspicuously in front of and not on the top of the snout as 

 in the other Antarctic seals. More than ever now in his alarm were the characteristics 

 of Macrorhinus evident the bulky forequarters, the massive head and neck, the free 

 use he made of the fore flippers which bent out at the metacarpus almost like the 



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