Appx.IL] ANTARCTIC FAUNA 353 



have any pretension at all to a terrestrial habit of life, in that they 

 use the moraines and rocky cliffs of the continental shores as 

 nesting sites. But they are all pelagic sea-birds. 



Yet in this exceedingly unpromising land of barren rock and 

 ice there are forms of life which are to be met with nowhere else, 

 and in this very fact lies the interest that attaches to a study of the 

 Antarctic fauna. 



To begin with the mammals, there are whales and seals ; and 

 of these a somewhat surprising number of different species. In 

 Ross Sea alone we met no fewer than seven different whales and 

 dolphins. In Ross Sea also we found five different kinds of seal, 

 and as many as twelve different species of bird. Of these at least 

 half are known to make use of the coasts of South Victoria Land 

 for nesting. 



Of the whales, the most prominent of all are the Killers, or 

 Orca whales, which scour the seas and the pack-ice in hundreds to 

 the terror of seals and penguins. The Killer is a powerful piebald 

 whale of some fifteen feet in length. It hunts in packs of a dozen, 

 or a score, or sometimes many scores. No sooner does the ice 

 break up than the Killers appear in the newly formed leads of 

 water, and the penguins show well that they appreciate the fact by 

 their unwillingness to be driven off the floes. From the middle of 

 September to the end of March these whales were in McMurdo 

 Strait, and the scars^ that they leave on the seals, more particularly 

 on the Crab- eating seal of the pack-ice, afford abundant testimony 

 to their vicious habits. Not one in five of the pack-ice seals is free 

 from the marks of the Killer's teeth, and even the Sea Leopard, 

 which is the most powerful seal of the Antarctic, has been found 

 with fearful lacerations. Only the Weddell seal is more or less 

 secure, because it avoids the open sea. Living, as it does, quite 

 close in shore, breeding in bights and bays on fast ice some ten or 

 twenty miles from the open water, it thus avoids the attacks of the 

 Killer to a large extent. 



Two other dolphins are commonly to be seen on the outskirts 

 of the Ross Sea pack-ice. Of these one is known as the Dusky 

 dolphin, a very handsomely marked animal, with dark brown back 

 and whitish under parts. 



The other is an allied species that has hitherto been undescribed. 

 We were not able to procure one, though many attempts were made 

 with the harpoon, but as all these dolphins, the Killer included, are 

 easily seen as they play in herds around the ship, the fact that the 



VOL. II. A A 



