164 



NATURE 



[UCTOBER 10, 19 1 2 



THE NORTHERN ELEPHANT SEAL. 

 A VALUABLE paper on the northern elephant 

 * 1- seal [Macrorhinus angustirostris, Gill), b}' 

 Mr. Charles H. Townsend, director of the New- 

 York Aquarium, has been published in " Zoo- 

 lopica " — scientific contributions of the New- 

 York Zoological Societ)-— vol. i.. No. 8. The 

 paper is No. 2 of the scientific results of the 

 expedition to the Gulf of California, in charge of 

 Mr. Townsend, by the U.S. Fisheries steamship 

 Albatross in 191 1.' It consists of fourteen pages, 

 accompanied by twenty-one illustrations, and re- 

 lates to a species concerning which there has been 

 comparatively little information obtained during 

 the past forty years. 



The northern elephant seal has long been on 

 the verge of extinction, and is now found only 

 on Guadalupe, an uninh-ihiled island lying in the 



The seals had little fear ol man. While the 

 large specimens were being skinned and skeleton- 

 ised, some of the animals slept undisturbed within 

 thirty feet of where the men were working. A 

 few of the females were accompanied by newly 

 born pups, indicating that the breeding season 

 was just commencing. The author did not 

 observe any male with more than one female. 



The three adult males which w^ere killed were 

 found to have an average length of sixteen feet, 

 with a girth of eleven feet. The adult female 

 obtained was eleven feet long. The new-born 

 pups were distinguishable in colour from the year- 

 lings, being dusky black: ' and w^ere apparently 

 about a week old '{Marcfi 2). The colour of the 

 adult is yellowish-brow-n, the \-oung animals being 

 greyish-brown. 



The skin of the adult male is verv thirk, and the 



ew of norlh end of elephant se.il rookery, Guadalupe Island, 

 heads erected arc in fighting attitude, with proboscis retracted J 



,lh wide open. U.S.S. Al//atr 



Pacific Ocean 140 miles off the northern part of 

 the peninsula of Lower California. It formerly 

 had a range extending for about 1000 miles along 

 the coast of Upper and Lower California, and has 

 never been recorded from any other region of the 

 north Pacific. It is the largest of all seals, and owes 

 its name to its great size and to the remarkable 

 snout or proboscis developed in the adult male. 



carcasses were so heavy that it required all the 

 strength of half-a-dozen men to turn one of them 

 over. Unless actually annoyed by members of 

 the party, the animals did not attempt to leave 

 the beach. The large males that accompanied 

 the nursing females were frequently engaged in 

 fights with unattached males. There had evi- 

 dently been considerable fighting, as their necks 



Being valuable for its oil, the seal was killed were more or less raw. 



in large numbers for commercial purposes as late In fighting, the large males crawl slowly and 



as the vear 1852. Since then it has seldom been laboriously within striking distance, and then, 



seen During the winter of iqi i, while in charge rearing on the front flippers, and drawing the_ 



of the deep-sea investigations of the United States heavy, pendant proboscis mto wrinkled folds well 



steamship Alhatross, Mr. Townsend called at 1 up on top of the snout, strike at each other s necks 



Guadalupe Island and was fortunate enough to 1 with their large canines. The skin of the under 



secure the specimens, photographs, and data upon 1 surface of the neck and fore-part of the breast is 



which the present paper is based. In addition to i greatly thickened ; it is practically hair ess, and 



the museum specimens obtained, six vearlings 1 years of figliting give it an exceedingly rough 



were shipped alive to the New York Aquarium. and calloused surface. This shidil, as it may be 



NO. 2241, VOL. go] 



