OCEANIC MAMMALS 463 



southern species, and is only slightly pendulous even in the 

 case of the largest and oldest males. Nine out of ten of all 

 those . . . [seen] at South Georgia had practically no 

 'trunks' at all." Lydekker (1909) has discussed the cranial 

 characters of this seal. 



The "blubber" of these seals is deep and so nearly clear oil 

 that a cask of chunks of it tries down to nearly the same 

 amount of oil (Murphy) . For this reason the animal has been 

 much persecuted by sealing crews in the southern oceans, and 

 immense numbers have been killed during the last century 

 and a half, bringing it in parts of its range nearly or quite to 

 the verge of extermination. In former times this seal occa- 

 sionally came as far north in the South Atlantic as the island 

 of St. Helena, where what must have been one of the last 

 visitors there was killed about 1739 (see Fraser, 1935). It was 

 at one time abundant on the island of Tristan da Cunha, on 

 Inaccessible Island, and on Gough Island, but it has been 

 extinct in those places for many years, with almost no record 

 remaining. Elsewhere in the South Atlantic it has been known 

 to appear on the coast of South Africa at rare intervals, as in 

 1926 when one was killed, and earlier at Algoa Bay in 1919 

 (Fitzsimons, 1920, vol. 4, pp. 227-229) where one was shot 

 and later mounted for the Port Elizabeth Museum. On the 

 east coast of South America, the late Dr. Roberto Dabbene 

 wrote in 1937, in response to Dr. Francis Harper's inquiry, 

 that at the breeding season a few individuals appear on the 

 coasts of Valdes Peninsula, in the province of Chubut, but 

 from other parts of the Argentine coast they have now quite 

 disappeared. 



Farther south it was formerly common on the Falkland 

 Islands, but even in the nineties was already rare (Kennedy, 

 1892) and in recent decades has appeared but sporadically. 

 On the island of South Georgia, however, it still remains in 

 some numbers under a certain degree of protection. Dr. 

 Lonnberg (1906) has published a number of notes on its habits 

 here and reproduces some excellent photographs. Dr. R. C. 

 Murphy has also given an account of the sealing industry in 

 this region. The breeding season is in the southern spring. 

 The animals then are ashore for longer periods, and though 

 they are monogamous there is much fighting between neigh- 

 boring bulls as if for adequate spacing, as well as for possession 



