30 



The fishers use, in order to kill them, a lance twelve or fifteen feet 

 long, with a sharp iron point of about two feet. With great address they 

 seize the moment when the animal raises his fore-paw to advance, and 

 plunging the weapon to the heart, he immediately falls down drenched 

 in blood. The females rarely offer the least opposition when attacked, 

 but they endeavour to fly ; if prevented, their countenance assumes the 

 expression of despair, and they weep piteously. 1 " I have myself," says 

 M. Peron, " seen a young female shed tears 1 abundantly, whilst one of 

 our wicked and cruel sailors amused himself at the sight, knocking out 

 her teeth with an oar, whenever she opened her mouth. The poor 

 animal might have softened a heart of stone, its mouth streaming with 

 blood and its eyes with tears." 



The Elephant Seal is valued on account of the oil which it yields in 

 abundance, an adult male averaging seventy gallons, and which in 

 quality is limpid, free from smell, never becoming rancid, and in 

 burning, smokeless. The hide, also, is from its strength and thickness, 

 extensively used for carriage and horse harness. 



New Georgia alone formerly supplied the English market with 

 twenty thousand gallons of oil annually ; this article being from its 

 quality greatly adapted for softening wool, and for other purposes in 

 the manufacture of cloth. 



The food of this animal appears to consist principally of cuttle-fish 

 and sea-weed. 



Gill. Califomian Sea Elephant. 



Synonym Morimga angustirostris, Gray, Supp. B.M.C. S. & W. 



1871, p. 5. 



This species, introduced recently to our notice by Dr. Theodore Gill, 

 of "Washington, is the northern representative of the Sea-Elephants, 

 so long and so well known in our hemisphere. 



Both kinds appear to be equally bulky, but differ principally in the 

 narrower muzzle possessed by the American animal. 



Inhabits California, from Cape San Lucas to Point Reyes. 



Genus CTSTOPHOEA, Gray. 



Adult males possess a dilatable globular sac-like appendage upon 

 the crown of the head, immediately connected by a cartilaginous crest 

 with the nostrils, and which, by their agency, can be distended or 

 collapsed at will. In the females and the young this singular hood is 

 rudimentary, scarcely perceptible. Muzzle very broad, hairy ; hairs of 

 the whiskers long, whitish, waved, compressed at their base ; those of 

 the body long and coarse, with an under-fur, short, soft, and thick ; the 

 limbs are all distinctly clawed. 



1 Evidently a common and natural habit, quite irrespective of anguish, for " when 

 on shore, they" (the fur seals of the Auckland Islands) " appear to be constantly 

 weeping." Captain Musgravs Narrative. 



2 angustus, narrow, and rostrum, beak or enout. 



