214 THE ANTARCTIC MANUAL. 
with a fish which has a white flesh, and which we cail at home Kvit- 
ting (Whiting), and also with sharp bones. 
Like other explorers, Capt. Larsen sometimes found dead seals. 
“Tn one of the valleys,” near Cape Seymour, Louis Philippe Land, 
“many dead seals were seen, one of which also was almost petrified, 
while others seemed to have come only recently here; and there were 
corpses in which the fat still contained some streaks of blood.” 
Monsieur Racovitza, the naturalist of the Belgica, has also pub- 
lished some highly interesting observations on the seals which he 
encountered in the pack-ice in the neighbourhood of Palmer Land 
in the same region. These will be found under each species. Of 
special novelty are the description of the appearance and strange and 
unexpected vocal powers of Ommatophoca. As regards food, it would 
seem that small crustaceans and other invertebrates are so abundant 
that the life of all, with the single exception, probably, of the Sea 
Leopard, consists, except in the breeding season, of a monotonous 
alternation of heavy gorging and long sleeps during the digestion of 
a meal which needs no trouble to procure. 
Monsieur Racovitza has something to say about the body tem- 
perature, which, as in the case of the Penguins, he found remarkably 
low. In the case of the Seals it did not exceed 37°. So efficacious is 
the protection against the cold afforded by the thick layer of blubber 
which underlies the skin in these animals that the carcase of a seal 
killed twenty-four hours previously and exposed to a temperature of 
20° was still warm interiorly. 
Of his experience on the Southern Cross off Victoria Land Mr. 
Borchgrevink writes, that the seals “encountered in the pack on the 
southward voyage were, as they always have been found in the Ant- 
arctic regions, scarce. . . . As we proceeded southwards the number 
of seals basking together increased considerably, and in the vicinity 
of Coulman Island and Cape Constance, in Lady Newnes Bay, we 
saw as many as 300 together. These were Weddell’s seals... . In 
the vicinity of Cape Adare seals were to be found nearly all the 
winter, either on the ice near their blow-holes or in the water at 
these holes, which they managed to keep open in Robertson Bay 
nearly all the winter. . . . The seals, like the penguins, provided us 
with fresh food.” 
It is obvious that we are still in sore need of careful and detailed 
studies of the life-history of each species, of their habits during the 
breeding season, and, above all, of the circumstances which admit 
the existence side by side of four species each distinct enough to 
form a separate genus, and whose very dentition differs in a highly 
