460 Miscellaneous. 



out scales, scutes, or other conspicuous modifications of hard and 

 naked cuticle. And the captain says, " Had it been a man of my 

 acquaintance, I should have easily recognized his features with my 

 naked eye." Nostrils not mentioned, but indicated in the drawing 

 by a crescentic mark at the end of the nose or muzzle. All these 

 are the characters of the 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 some- 

 thing 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 any 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 distinguished 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 

 indeed of any size, would be encountered in latitude 24° 44' south, 

 and longitude 9° 22' east — viz. about 300 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 proboscidia, which attains the length of 

 from 20 to 30 feet. These great seals abound in certain of the 

 islands of the southern and antarctic seas, from which an individual 

 is occasionally floated off upon an iceberg. The sea-lion exhibited in 

 London last spring, which was a young individual of the Phoca pro- 

 boscidia, was actually captured in that predicament, having been 

 carried by the currents that set northward towards the Cape, where 

 its temporary resting-place was rapidly melting away. When a large 

 individual of the Phoca proboscidia or Phoca leonina is thus borne off 

 to a distance from its native shore, it is compelled to return for rest 

 to its floating abode, after it has made its daily excursion in quest of 

 the fishes or squids that constitute its food. It is thus brought by 

 the iceberg into the latitudes of the Cape, and perhaps further north, 

 before the berg has melted away. Then the poor seal is compelled 

 to swim as long as strength endures ; and in such a predicament I 

 imagine the creature was that Mr. Sartoris saw rapidly approaching 

 the Daedalus from before the beam, scanning, probably, its capabili- 

 ties as a resting-place, as it paddled its long stiff body past the ship. 

 In so doing, it would raise a head of the form and colour described 

 and delineated by Captain M'Quhae, supported on a neck also of 

 the diameter given ; the thick neck passing into an inflexible trunk, 

 the longer and coarser hair on the upper part of which would give 

 rise to the idea, especially if the species were the Phoca leonina, ex- 

 plained by the similes above-cited. The organs of locomotion would 

 be out of sight. The pectoral fins being set on very low down, as in 



