652 MR. J. W. CLARK ON EARED SEALS, [Dec. 7, 
Island] to discover whether the sealing business might not have 
been carried on there”’ *. 
In the same year they were sighted by D’ Entrecasteaux, who com- 
manded the first expedition sent out to search for La Pérouse. One 
of the islands was on fire, caused, it was supposed, by sealers, ‘as an 
American vessel had landed a party of men to obtain oil from the 
seals, which are very numerous there.” The expedition did not 
land; but they ‘‘saw plenty of seals swimming among masses of sea- 
weed, about three-quarters of a mile from the coast”’ +. 
In February 1773, the vessels conveying Lord Macartney to 
China touched there. They found five men on the island, three 
French and two English, who were engaged in collecting Seal-skins, 
25,000 of which they were bound to supply in a given time for the 
Canton market. ‘One of them, an Englishman, had been there 
for some time on a former adventure.” 
“The seals,” says the narrator t, ‘‘ whose skins are thus an article 
of commerce, are found here in greater numbers in the summer than 
in the winter, when they generally keep in deep water, and under 
the weeds, which shelter them from the inclemency of the weather. 
In the summer months they come ashore, sometimes in droves of 
eight hundred or a thousand at a time, out of which about a hun- 
dred are destroyed, that number being as many as five men can skin 
and peg down to dry in the course of a day. Little of the oil 
which these animals might furnish is collected, for want of casks to 
put it in; part of the best is boiled, and serves those people instead 
of butter. The seal of Amsterdam is the Phoca ursina of Linneeus. 
The female weighs, usually, from seventy to one hundred and twenty 
pounds, and is from three to five feet in length; but the male is 
considerably larger. In general they are not shy; sometimes they 
plunge into the water instantly upon any one’s approach, but at other 
times remain steadily on the rocks, bark, and rear themselves up in 
a menacing posture; but the blow of a stick upon the nose seemed 
sufficient to dispatch them. Most of those which come ashore are: 
females, in the proportion of more than thirty to one male. Whe- 
ther, in those animals, nature has fixed on such an apparent dispro- 
portion between the two sexes, or whether, while the females have 
occasion to seek the shore, the males continue in the deep, has not 
hitherto been ascertained by any observations here. In the winter 
season great numbers of Sea-lions (Phoce leonine), some eighteen 
feet long, crawl out of the sea upon the causeway, making a pro- 
digious howling noise . . ._ It is thought that both Seals and Sea- 
lions are somewhat less numerous here of late, since the place has 
been frequented by vessels for the purpose of getting their skins.” 
H.M.S. Megeera was run ashore on St. Paul’s, June 19, 1871. 
* ‘An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson, &c.,’ by John 
Hunter, Esq., 4to, London, 1793, p. 557. 
t ‘Relation du voyage a la recherche de La Pérouse, pendant les années 1791-2, 
par le Citoyen Labillardiére, un des Naturalistes de l’Expedition’ (2 vols. 4to, 
Paris, 1801), vol. i. p. 110. 
¢ ‘An authentic account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the 
Emperor of China,’ by Sir G. Staunton (2 vols. 4to, London, 1797), i. p. 210. 
