EXTERMINATION OF SEALS 135 



correct I have no doubt, but I am afraid that those whalers 

 saw but to slay. At anyrate, at the time of the SwarCs 

 cruise, they were so scarce, or shy, that I failed to discover 

 any. 



In King George's Sound a few still linger ; but if one is 

 seen there by any wild fowler he never fails to discharge 

 his gun at it though it may be only charged with an ounce 

 or two of small shot. So it happens, sometimes, that the 

 poor animal gets away to die a lingering death. If killed 

 it is of small value, as the skin is comparatively worthless. 



How far north, on the west coast, this species ranges 

 I do not know. I have not traced it beyond Flinder's 

 bay, where one was killed near Port Augusta in 1889. 

 There appear to never have been any seals on the northern 

 parts of the west coast, nor on the north-western ; but it 

 is tolerably certain that both hair- and fur-seals visited 

 nearly all parts of the coast of Victoria and New South 

 Wales, until those colonies became pretty thickly inhabited 

 by white settlers. They, however, always retired to breed 

 to the small islands at a distance from the mainland. 

 Very small islands were generally chosen for this important 

 function — why, is a puzzling problem which I have been 

 unable to solve. If concealment was the intention of the 

 animal, its instinct seems to have misled it — a very 

 unlikely thing. An island of a few square miles of 

 surface is not a spot where an enemy would be likely to 

 look for the young of so large an animal as the seal, 

 especially when the breeding place was situated many 

 hundreds of miles from the mainland ; but once found, the 

 smallness of the area greatly facilitated the destruction of 

 the game, and rendered escape impossible. 



All the typical Australian gulls and terns were seen in 

 the Great Bight, though some of them appeared to be only 

 casual visitors to that district, and others were more 

 numerous than on any other part of the coast known to 

 me. The commonest was the Australian tern {Sterna 

 australis)y and almost equally abundant was Larus 

 pacijicus^ the only true gull known to me as an inhabitant 

 of our coasts. The tern is found all round Australia, but 



