SEA-ELEPHANTS 305 



the commencement of the present century was known in Europe only by a couple 



of skulls brought to England by the great navigator after whom it is named. Its 



range appears to be restricted to the Antarctic pack-ice. Although this seal is 



about as unlike an adult male elephant-seal as can well be imagined, it is not a 



little remarkable that there is a very decided resemblance to young individuals ; 



this indicating that all the Antarctic seals are nearly related to one another. 



So far as bodily size is concerned, the great lumbering walruses 

 Sea-Elephants. . J ■, 



of the Arctic are represented in the Antarctic by the still more 



gigantic sea-elephants or elephant-seals (Macrorhinus, or Mirunga), males of both 

 species of which may attain a length of rather more than twenty feet, although 

 the females reach little more than half these dimensions. Here, however, the 

 resemblance ceases, for while walruses represent a family by themselves, sea- 

 elephants can only be regarded as overgrown true seals, related, as we have just 

 seen, to Ross's seal. The most obvious characteristic of sea-elephants, next to their 

 gigantic dimensions, is the short retractible and expansible trunk or proboscis of 

 the adult males, or bulls as they are called by the sealers. The length of this 

 trunk varies, however, considerably in the two species by which the genus is 

 represented. In the typical Macrorhinus leoninus of Juan Fernandez, which, 

 as mentioned in an earlier chapter, annually migrates northward to breed on 

 Guadalupe Island and (formerly) the adjacent coast of California, the trunk is of 

 considerable length, whereas in the southern M. patagonicus it is much shorter. 

 Indeed, when bulls of the typical Juan Fernandez are compared with those of the 

 Falkland race of the southern species, the latter can scarcely be said to have a 

 trunk at all. The Crozet race of the southern species (M. p. crosetensis) has 

 a little longer trunk, and the same is the case with the Macquarie race (M. p. 

 macquariensis). On the other hand, the sea-elephants which formerly frequented 

 the shores of King Island, in Bass Strait dividing Tasmania from Australia, are 

 depicted in an old engraving with quite long trunks, and, if this be trustworthy, 

 they may have represented a third species, now unfortunately extinct. 



Like their Juan Fernandez and Guadalupe relative, the southern sea-elephants 

 have been the object of unremitting persecution for the sake of their valuable oil 

 for about a century and a half. So incessantly and severely, indeed, have both 

 species been hunted, that the wonder is not that they are more or less nearly, 

 if not completely, exterminated in many of their haunts, but that any of them 

 survive. As regards the early history of this persecution, the naturalist Weddell 

 stated so long ago as the year 1823 that sea-elephants were even then nearly 

 extinct in South Georgia, whence some twenty thousand tons of their oil had been 

 shipped to London, to say nothing of enormous quantities carried to other ports. 

 At an earlier date, 1802, six hundred of these huge seals are reported to have 

 been killed on King Island in the course of a period of ten weeks between 

 the beginning of March and the end of May. Much important information with 

 regard to the present condition of the sea-elephants in the southern ocean was 

 acquired during the recent Antarctic expeditions, from which it appears that in 

 the Macquarie Islands all the old males have been killed off, as no individuals 

 were seen of more than eight feet in length, and all lacked the well-developed pro- 

 boscis of the full-grown bull. A considerable number of young animals were, 

 vol. 111. — 20 



