THE SEA LEOPARD. 



241 



ELEPHANT SEAL. 



through the breakers to the small boat, and towed to the vessel. On board, large pots set in a brick 

 furnace are ready prepared, where the blubber is rendered, the oil extracted being very superior for 

 lubricating purposes. In these voyages the crews, unlike the Dundee fishers, hunt both Seals and 

 Whales at the same time, the Americans having quite a monopoly of this special trade. 



Ross's LARGE-EYED SEAL.* In the voyage of the Erebus and Terror to the Antarctic regions, 

 1839-43, there was obtained a Seal named after the commander of the Expedition. Little or nothing 

 is recorded of its special habitat and habits, the main peculiarities resting in its skeleton. The stuffed 

 skin, now in the British Museum, is of a greenish-yellow colour, with close, oblique, yellow stripes on 

 the side, pale beneath, and the fur is close-set and rigid. The skull is broad, with great orbits. This 

 genus has six molar teeth on each side of the upper and five on each side of the lower jaw. The canines 



j are of very moderate dimensions, and the teeth, as a whole, are relatively small. Its specific name is 



J derived from its great e^es. 



THE SEA LEOPARD. t Under the names Sea Leopard and Leopard Seal, indiscriminately used by 



', the sailors or Southern sealers, two animals, apparently distinct, have evidently been confounded by 

 them as well as by naturalists. Indeed, another seemingly totally different animal of the North 

 Pacific has also been named Leopard Seal by Scammon. That to which the title Sea Leopard appears 

 most applicable is what De Blainville and others called the Small-nailed Seal (Phoca leptonyx), and F. 

 Cuvier the Narrow-muzzled Seal (Stenorliynclius leptonyx]. Its precise distribution is uncertain, but it 

 has been found on the coasts of Australia, New Zealand, Falkland, Campbell, Auckland, and Lord 

 Howe's Islands, and the Antarctic Ocean (on pack-ice). It may possibly be met with elsewhere, but 

 the foregoing are authenticated localities. Mr. A. W. Scott describes male and female stuffed speci- 

 mens in the Sydney Museum. The old male measures twelve feet in length ; the glossy spotted skin is 

 of a light silvery grey, with pale yellowish-white in patches, brought into relief by black-grey shading ; 

 its back and sides are darker, and belly lighter. The younger but adult female is seven feet long. 

 Her colour above is darkish-grey, almost black in the middle line, intermixed by narrow markings 

 of darker hue, and of yellowish-white, and the under parts without spots and also yellowish-white. 

 A specimen kept alive for several days at Port Jackson had a long muzzle, a long thin neck, and in its 

 liabits generally it resembled the Seal tribe. Dr. George Bennett killed a male in Shoalhaven River 

 (August, 1859), several miles above salt-water reach, which had a water-mole in its stomach. Dr. Knox 

 states that those he examined in New Zealand contained in their stomachs fish-bones, gulls' feathers, 



80 



Ommatophoca Eossii. 



f Stenorhynchus leptonyx. 



