ANTARCTIC ADVENTURE AND RESEARCH 



could cut a hole through six feet of winter ice in order 

 to breathe. I don't believe they ever cut through the 

 ice, but I have watched a seal laboriously enlarging a 

 natural hole in a tide-crack or shear-crack, so as to 

 make it large enough for an outlet. It opens its jaws 

 to the widest, and uses the teeth as a sort of rasp on 

 the edges of the hole. After many hours of this un- 

 pleasant work, no doubt it files away some inches from 

 all round an accidental hole, and so is able to shoot 

 out on to the sea-ice. 



Some twenty miles up the Koettlitz Glacier, we were 

 surprised to find many seals, and came to the conclusion 

 that they swam up the subglacial stream, which I 

 named the Alph River. On one occasion I prodded 

 one of these seals with my ice ax. After some sneezes 

 and grumbles, he proceeded to sing to me. He lay 

 over on his side and produced a whole octave of mu- 

 sical notes from his chest, ranging up to a canarylike 

 chirrup. Later I found that Dr. Wilson and Dr. 

 Racovitzi had already recorded the musical ability of 

 Antarctic seals. When the seal approaches the end of 

 life, it seems to wander from the sea. At any rate 

 we came on a number of carcasses several thousand 

 feet up the Ferrar Glacier, and nearly twenty miles 

 from the sea. Even in the Dry Valley of Taylor 

 Glacier we found desiccated carcasses on the ground 

 moraine. Presumably they had crawled up the valley 

 over a carpet of snow or ice which had disappeared 

 when we first traversed it in 191 1. 



Birds. — Wilson records twelve species of birds seen 

 in East Antarctica, but only three went as far south as 



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