212 THE ANTARCTIC MANUAL. 
and February, is with young. In no individual did I find more than 
one embryo... .” 
The seals showed great power of jumping out of the water. On 
one occasion some were found “on a tilted berg, and so high was the 
ledge above the level of the water,” that Mr. Bruce relates, that the 
sealers only “clambered up with difficulty and secured their prey.” 
He has seen the seals “rising eight or ten feet above the sea, and 
[they] cover distances of fully twenty feet in length.” 
The extraordinary scars and wounds observed on the seals, as 
described by Mr. Bruce, have been already noticed by previous 
naturalists, and attributed to various causes. One of the most 
fanciful theories ascribed them to the attacks of a large and un- 
known terrestrial carnivorous mammal corresponding to the Polar 
Bear of Arctic regions. No traces of any such mammal have been 
found by later expeditions. 
These scars are also described by Mr. H. J. Bull, who gained his 
experiences of the seals in 1894-95 during a sealing and whaling 
trip to Victoria Land.* Mr. Bull states that “nearly one half of the 
seals captured” exhibited the peculiar scars or wounds. These 
wounds, which were in sonie cases “quite fresh—in fact bleeding— 
are not found about the necks and heads of the animals, but about 
their body, more particularly the lower parts.” Their peculiarity 
consists in their great length—‘“ up to twelve inches,” and their fre- 
quently parallel arrangement at a distance of “about one inch apart.” 
Their nature and appearance as described above, together with the 
fact that “the wounded seals were met with throughout the pack, 
consequently in many cases hundreds of miles away from the nearest 
land,’ are, thinks Mr. Bull, a death-blow to the theories which ascribe 
them either to the work of a “huge land mammal” or to the fight- 
ing of the males in the breeding season. Far more likely is it that 
they are caused by the attacks either of some shark, or, more pro- 
bably still, by the Killer-whale, a cosmopolitan cetacean, with a 
well-known reputation for a partiality for seal-flesh. Mr. Bull’s 
opinion is strengthened by the fact “the scars were rarely, if ever, 
found on the sea-leopards,” “as if the size of this animal rather 
awed the mysterious enemy of his smaller cousins.” Some further 
observations on this subject have been made by Mr. W. G. Burn 
Murdoch in the work quoted in footnote. t 
* «The Cruise of the Antarctic to the South Polar Regions.’ London, 1896. See 
pp. 139 and 187 to 194. 
+ ‘From Dundee to the Antarctic: an Artist’s Notes and Sketches during the 
Dundee Antarctic Expedition, 1892-93. London, 1894. 
