140 THE SEALS OF SOUTHERN SEAS, 



result, and blows with their paws followed, and as usually 

 happened, the more feeble and timid gave way to the 

 stronger.'' 



The seals of the Southern seas are quite different from 

 those of the Northern. The most remarkable of these ani- 

 mals is the Sea Elephant, or Proboscis Seal^ named thus, 

 partly on account of the very peculiar appearance of its 

 short trunk, and also from its being much the largest of its 

 kind, doubling the dimensions of its terrestrial namesake, 

 reaching the enormous length of twenty-five and thirty feet, 

 and being also of a proportionate thickness. Its color is 

 sometimes gray or blue-gray, and more rarely blackish- 

 brown. There is an absence of everything like external 

 ears ; it has great whiskers of strong coarse hairs, very long, 

 and twisted somewhat like a screw, with other similar hairs 

 over each eye, supplying the place of eyebrows ; the eyes 

 are very large and prominent ; strong and powerful swim- 

 ming paws, having at their margins five small black nails ; 

 a very short tail, which is almost hid beneath two flat hori- 

 zontal fins: these form the distinguishing peculiarities of 

 this strange animal. When the sea-elephant is in a state of 

 repose, its nostrils, shrunk and hanging down, serve only to 

 make the face appear larger: but whenever he rouses him- 

 self, when he respires violently, or when about to attack or 

 defend himself, the proboscis becomes lengthened in the 

 form of a tube to the length of about a foot; and then not 

 only is the countenance changed, but the character of the 

 voice is modified in a not less striking manner. Though 

 furnished with large and powerful tusks, the sea-elephant is 

 mild and inoffensive in his habits ; but when assailed is a 

 formidable adversary. It has been related that a sailor 

 having killed a young one, and skinned it in the presence of 

 its mother, she came up behind him, and seizing his head in 

 her mouth, so injured his skull, that he died in a day or two 

 afterwards. This is not, however, their usual habit, as has 



