MAMMALS. 39 



In former years the Kerguelen group of islands was noted as a 

 favorite breediug-place for tbe sea-elephaut {MacrorMnus Iconinus, L.). 

 On this account it has been much frequented by sealers for the last forty 

 years, and resorted to also by whalers as a winteriug-place, on account 

 of the great security of Three Island Harbor. The sea-elephants have 

 been so recklessly killed off year after year, no precautions having been 

 taken to secure the preservation of the species, that now they have 

 become very rare. Only a single small schooner, the Eoswell King, was 

 working the island during our visit, two others and a bark working 

 Heard's Island, some three hundred miles to the south, where the 

 elephants are still found in considerable numbers. Probably they would 

 long since have abandoned the Kerguelen Islands altogether but for a 

 single inaccessible stretch of coast, " Bonfire Beach," where they still 

 " haul up " every spring (October and November) and breed in consid- 

 erable numbers. The beach is limited at each end by precipitous cliffs, 

 across which it is quite impossible to transport oil in casks, nor can 

 boats land from the sea, or vessels lie at anchor in the offing, from the 

 fact that the beach is on the west, or windward coast, and exposed to the 

 full violence of the wind. 



No sea-elephants "hauled up" in the neighborhood of the American 

 station previous to December. On the 13th of that month, while a 

 boat's crew from the United States steamer Monongahela were waiting 

 at a rocky beach for their officers, a small female of this species came 

 out of the water and was captured and killed by them. It measured in 

 length 8 feet 10 inches, and in girth 8 feet 4 inches, being enormously 

 fat. The layer of fat beneath the skin was 4 inches deep, and the body 

 seemed almost formless ; a skin stuffed with semi-fluid fat, that quivered 

 and trembled, when moved, like jelly. The skin was prepared and pre- 

 served, and the skeleton partly cleaned and sunk in a barrel for small 

 crustaceans to work on. Most unfortunately, during a very severe gale 

 about Christmas time, it was carried away by the violence of the sea and 

 lost. Two other skins and skeletons were procured for me by captains 

 of sealers, one of which, a fine full-grown bull from Heard's Island, said 

 to have measured 23 feet in length, was also lost, along with fifty barrels 

 of oil, while being rafted off to the schooner. The other, a small and 

 immature specimen, came from the eastern Kerguelen coast, and has 

 been brought home in safety. It was procured for me by Captain Fuller, 

 of the schooner Roswell King. (See Nos. 15336 and 12455 National Mu- 

 seum Catalogue.) The dentition of this specimen is complete, but the 



