448 Canadian Record of Science. 
me that his ancestors, living about Otago Heads, used an- 
nually to make expeditions to Cape Saunders to catch young 
seals after the breeding season. I also find seals’ bones in 
ancient Maori middens in sufficient numbers to indicate 
that the animal was once a staple of food here. The natives 
_ had neither methods nor motives which could result in the 
extermination of seals; indeed the parts of the coast where 
these were and still are most plentiful, were and yet remain 
uninhabited. 
Such records as we have of the transactions on the coasts 
of South Island in the early part of the century tell us that 
sealing was the first industry; the sealers preceded the 
whalers, as the whalers preceded the “ flax”! traders, and 
these in turn were succeeded by the colonists. Of the seal- 
ers and their doings we have little actual record in the 
colony which has since sprung up, but what we know we 
learn mainly from the older colony of New South Wales | 
and from the books of travellers. More may doubtless be 
learned from England and North America, whence came a 
large number of the sealing vessels. As it is, the inform- 
ation has to be sought from scattered sources. It will be 
readily understood how slight is the acquaintance of the 
colonists with seals and their history, when it is considered 
that in the South Island, which the seals formerly inhab- 
ited, the west coast is almost unoccupied along a great part 
of its extent ; while on the east coast, which is fairly popu- 
lated, the seals became almost extinct prior to the perman- 
ent settlement of the country. The west coast is only 
inhabited as far north as lat. 44°. 
As early as 1846, 7. ¢., six years after the foundation of 
the colony, when Major Heaphy and Mr. Brunner, the ex- 
plorers sent by the New Zealand Company, passed down 
the coast by land, they found a few seals, which were 
regarded with curiosity, on the Steeples at Cape Foulwind. 
Local tradition referred to the already almost mythical 
times of the sealers and their doings here. The explorers, 
1 Phormium tenax. 
