THE GREAT UNKNOWN. 



head of a warm-blooded mammal— none of them 

 those of a cold-blooded reptile or fish. Body long, 

 dark brown, not undulating, without dorsal or 

 other apparent fins ; 'but something like the mane 

 of a horse, or rather a bunch of sea- weed, washed 

 about its back.' The character of the integuments 

 would be a most important one for the zoologist 

 in the determination of the class to which the 

 above-defined creature belonged. If an opinion 

 can be deduced as to the integuments from the 

 above indication, it is that the species had hair, 

 which, if it was too short and close to be distin- 

 guished on the head, was visible where it usually 

 is the longest, on the middle line of the shoulders 

 or advanced part of the back, where it was not 

 stiff and upright like the rays of a fin, but 'washed 

 about.' Guided by the above interpretation, of 

 the 'mane of a horse, or a bunch of sea- weed,' the 

 animal was not a cetaceous mammal, but rather 

 a great seal. But what seal of large size, or in- 

 deed of any size, would be encountered in latitude 

 24° 44' south, and longitude 9° 22' east— viz., 

 about three hundred miles from the western shore 

 of the southern end of Africa? The most likely 

 species to be there met with are the largest of the 

 seal tribe, e.g., Anson's sea-lion, or that known to 

 the southern whalers by the name of the "sea- 

 elephant,"' the Phoca proboscidea, which attains 

 the length of from twenty to thirty feet. These 

 great seals abound in certain of the islands of the 

 southern and antarctic seas, from which an indi- 

 vidual is occasionally floated off upon an iceberg. 

 The sea-lion exhibited in London last spring, 

 which was a young individual of the Phoca pro- 

 boscidea, was actually captured in that predica- 

 ment; having been carried by the currents that 

 set northward towards the Cape, where its tem- 

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